EDWARD VI.--ADVANCE OF THE REFORMATION.--ERASMUS’S
PARAPHRASE.--HOMILIES.--CRANMER’S CATECHISM.--OFFICE OF
COMMUNION.--BOOK OF COMMON-PRAYER.--TIME OF SERVICE, AND
LENGTH.--PRIMER.--ARTICLES OF 1553.--MODERATION OF THE ENGLISH
REFORMERS.
The accession of Edward, the Josiah of his country, as he was commonly
called in his own day, reanimated the Reformation; and during his
short reign it was that the church of England was constructed, in
the main, such as we now see it. The young prince, who was brought
up a protestant, was himself eminently calculated to recommend the
cause. His own character, both mental and moral, was a most persuasive
advocate of the system which had nurtured it. Cardan, who was called
into England to prescribe for the Archbishop of St. Andrews, then sick
of a dropsy, and was introduced to the king, now in his fifteenth year,
relates the particulars of a short conversation which he had with him
on the subject of comets, which won the heart of the philosopher,
and, like a journal which has come down to us written in his own
hand,[347] certainly argues in him a wit beyond his age. Latin he
spoke, says Cardan, who seems to have conversed with him in it, as
readily as himself; and in many other languages he is said to have been
a proficient, stimulated, perhaps, by an apophthegm of Roger Ascham,
his sister’s schoolmaster, though not his own, “that as a bird cannot
soar unto heaven with one wing, so cannot a man attain unto excellence
with one tongue.” Indeed, to a study of tongues, we are told by a
correspondent of his own, he had more applied than to any matter either
of history or of policy, the holy Scriptures excepted; nevertheless,
the pains which were taken to render him in all things an accomplished
prince may be seen in the questions (eighty-four in number) submitted
to him by the clerk of the council, probably at the desire of the
Protector Somerset; and which were intended as food for his private
speculations and debates with his friends. They are such as embrace
nearly all those principles of government upon which he would be
afterwards called to act--“Whether is better for the commonwealth that
the power be in the nobility or the people?” “How easily a weak prince
with good order may long be maintained; and how soon a mighty prince
with little disorder may be destroyed?” “What causeth an inheritor
king to lose his realm?” “Whether religion, besides the honour of God,
be not also the greatest stay of civil order?” “How dangerous it is
to be the author of a new matter?”[348]--with many other problems,
well worth the attention of those to whom the education of a sovereign
is confided. His heart was as good as his head; and as it is with
the latter that we believe, but with the former that we believe unto
righteousness, so did its natural dictates rise in arms against those
more subtle principles according to which Cranmer had conscientiously
persuaded himself, and endeavoured to persuade the king, that the death
of Joan of Kent was a duty; and happy would it have been for the memory
of that otherwise almost unspotted character, had he submitted his
more mature but more sophisticated judgment to the righteous tears of
this gifted boy. What he did, however, he did ignorantly; not in any
carnal zeal, but after long debate, and as he writes, in bitterness
and sorrow of spirit.[349] He did it in the temper in which Sir Matthew
Hale condemned the witches of Leostoff, and suffered judgment to be
executed upon them; though he represents himself most unaffectedly,
and most truly, as having in general such tenderness in cases of life
as almost disqualified him for the bench; and though Sir Thomas Brown,
who actually wrote against vulgar errors, was in court at the time,
and influenced by his voice the verdict of the jury.[350] But in this
case, Cranmer seems to have thought that the honour of Christ himself,
which was blasphemed, required an example to be made; and, weak and
wicked as it is now allowed to be to condemn to the flames for matters
of speculative opinion, which do not directly interfere with the morals
of society, and therefore do not demand the interposition of the
secular magistrate, it was the dogma of the church in which Cranmer had
been born and bred: from which even yet he had not wholly emancipated
himself; but to which Edward, happily for himself and his country, had
never been enslaved. The case of Van Paris the Dutchman is usually
coupled with this of Joan Bocher; but there is no sufficient proof
that Cranmer was here a party actively engaged, or that any blame is
due to him, unless it be that he did not intercede for his life. It is
singular, and characteristic of the force of early prejudice, that in
the touching confession which Cranmer made before he went to the stake,
no allusion is found to the case of this poor fanatic.
Such was the child to whose hand Providence committed the sceptre of
England for a short season, “Ostendunt terris hunc tantum fata;” and
accordingly the church had rest in those days. The Roman Catholic
party, which had so effectually clogged the wheels of the Reformation
in the latter years of Henry, did not resign their power without a
struggle under Edward. From amongst the guardians of the king, who were
also to be the governors of the kingdom during the minority, the Earl
of Hertford, afterwards Duke of Somerset, the king’s maternal uncle,
and a friend of the Reformation, was chosen head of the regency, under
the title of Protector; whilst Wriothesley, the lord chancellor, a
Catholic, and the leader of his sect, who opposed the elevation of
Somerset, hoping that, if all the members were equal in authority,
the substantial power would be his own, was deposed from his office,
and deprived of the seals. Cranmer was in his own right, as primate,
a member of this commission; and finding a cordial coadjutor in the
Protector, he now felt himself released from the vexatious restrictions
which had hitherto cramped him, and began for the first time to breathe
freely. Now, therefore, his plans for restoring the national church
rapidly develope themselves, and to the consideration of these our
attention must for the present be directed.
It would be easy to take a more extensive sweep of contemporary
history, as others have done, and to adorn our narrative with the
spoils--for the stirring times here treated of, supply abundant
materials for such a purpose; but it is better, perhaps, to follow
our subject closely up, putting aside many collateral incidents, not,
indeed, as without their influence on the Reformation, but as holding
a very subordinate place in it; and thus to keep our eye single,
neither distracting it by too much diversity, nor perplexing it by too
much detail. For, in general, the most profitable method of treating
a complicated subject, perhaps, is, not to open up every particular,
great and small, which may bear upon it in its degree; but rather to
filter the rush of matter which presents itself, and, striving to make
a small book, which is a hard thing, instead of a large one, which
is most easy, to place the reader in possession of such events only
as served to stamp the times to which they belonged, or serve now to
characterise them, and then to leave him to his own reflection or to
his own study to fill up the picture.
The first of those successive publications, by the circulation of
which Cranmer built up the faith of his country, was _Erasmus’s
Paraphrase of the New Testament_, translated into English, a copy
of which, as well as of the Bible, was to be set up in every parish
church; the next, a volume of _Homilies_, twelve in number. The
paraphrase Cranmer himself did not maintain to be perfect; but it
was the best upon which he could lay his hand; moreover, as executed
by a member of the church of Rome, (from whose eyes, however, the
scales were fast falling,) it was calculated, he might think (and an
expression which drops from him confirms this),[351] for a church in
a state of transition like our own; Gardiner offered many captious
objections to it; others, which might have been urged with more show of
reason, he was not, perhaps, the man to discover or propound. Had he
compared it with similar writings of some other of the reformers, he
would have found that, in making such a choice, Cranmer, so far from
intending to irritate, could only be led by a desire to conciliate the
Catholics as much as might be without a compromise. Had he compared,
for instance, Erasmus’s paraphrase of the Galatians with the commentary
of Luther on the same epistle--had he contrasted the caution of the one
interpreter with the intrepidity, not to say hardihood, of the other;
the different degrees of animation with which the great evangelical
doctrines, and those the most obnoxious to the Roman catholics, are
respectively handled by them; the different degrees of keenness they
discover in the detection of those doctrines under the same texts;
the more or less reserved sense in which the works of the law are
understood as affecting justification; not to speak of the direct
fulminations against the church of Rome, which Luther takes every
occasion to launch, and Erasmus to withhold;--if he had thus done,
probably Luther’s most powerful treatise would not, indeed, have made
him a convert to his opinions; Cranmer himself most likely would have
disavowed, or at least tempered, several of them; but it would have
at any rate satisfied him that the archbishop had far more offensive
weapons in his armoury than those which he thought proper on this
occasion to produce.
The objections which Gardiner directed against the _Homilies_ were
many of them just enough in logic, though feeble in themselves, for
it was alleged, that the doctrines of the Homilies and of the King’s
Book did not always agree; nor did they: but this only served to show
(what was the truth) that, when the latter was published, Cranmer was
counteracted by other influence; or else (what was equally the truth)
that his own opinions had in the interval undergone considerable
revision. Justification by faith only, a doctrine which in the King’s
Book had been greatly qualified, is made a leading principle in the
Homilies; and certain superstitions of the church of Rome, which in the
former were tolerated, if not encouraged, in the latter were absolutely
forbidden.[352] It may be noticed, in passing, that on some points, as
on that of human corruption for instance, a tone of greater moderation
prevails in this book of the Homilies than in the other, which appeared
in 1562, prepared by Queen Elizabeth’s bishops, principally, it
has been said, by Jewel.[353] Such a volume had been promised in an
advertisement affixed to the former one; and many of the subjects
actually treated in it are there enumerated, though not all: but the
composition, it should seem, was reserved for those who completed the
Reformation. In neither case, however, can the several Homilies be
assigned to their several authors with any certainty. At the same time
in the first volume (for with regard to the second no single Homily
of them all has been appropriated,) there is reason to think that the
one on “salvation” is Cranmer’s own; as perhaps those on “faith” and
“good works;”[354] and internal evidence arising out of certain homely
expressions, and peculiar forms of ejaculation, the like to which occur
in Latimer’s sermons, pretty clearly betrays the hand of the Bishop
of Worcester to have been engaged in the homily against “brawling and
contention;” the one against “adultery” may be safely given to Thomas
Becon, one of Cranmer’s chaplains, in whose works, published in 1564,
it is still to be found; of the rest nothing is known but by the merest
conjecture.[355] On the whole, the key to the right understanding of
either volume is not the Calvinistic controversy; for amongst all
the Homilies, as Bishop Burnet observes, there are none relating to
the divine decrees[356]--but the horror of papal abuses, which drove
the compilers into some hearty expressions in contradiction to them,
particularly in those for the Nativity and Whitsunday--expressions
which would rather have recommended themselves to the honest
extravagance of a Latimer than to the caution of a Cranmer, and which
have accordingly given occasion to many doubtful disputations both in
metaphysics and theology. Still, the _Homilies_ must have been
most wholesome lessons for those times, when minor differences were
merged in the broad distinction between Romanists and men of the new
learning, and in the one great struggle for the liberties temporal and
spiritual of the church of England.
Soon after this, in the year 1548, was published _Cranmer’s
Catechism_, as it was called, it being said in the title-page
to be “set forth” by him; a circumstance which led Burnet into the
mistake, subsequently corrected at the suggestion of Strype, that it
was composed by the archbishop. The truth is, that it was originally
written in German, and was probably one of the many catechisms to which
Luther’s own gave rise, and by which the Reformation in Germany was
forwarded. It was translated into Latin by Justus Jonas, the father
most likely (for there were two), the intimate friend of Luther; and
might have been brought into England by the son, a less conspicuous
character among the reformers, who came to this country in 1548, driven
from his home, like many more, by the religious ordinance of Charles V.
known by the name of the _Interim_. From the Latin it was turned
into English, faithfully for the most part, by some hand of Cranmer’s
own choosing, perhaps by Rowland Taylor the martyr, of glorious memory,
then one of his chaplains. It is drawn up on the same plan as the
Bishops’ Book and the King’s Book, which had preceded it; being an
exposition of the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Sacraments. As
Cranmer prefixed to the work his own name, it must be considered to
express his own opinions at the time; and its history is here traced
with the more care, because it presents another picture of the
progressive workings of his mind towards the point at which he finally
reposed, and another proof of the slow and painful process through
which he arrived at what he conceived to be the truth. Accordingly,
in his Catechism we still find the Commandments arranged after the
Roman Catholic usage, the second omitted, or consolidated with the
first, and the tenth divided into two. We find three sacraments still
insisted upon, though four others had been withdrawn--baptism, the bath
of regeneration, or instrument of the second birth;[357] absolution,
or the authority of the keys, by virtue of which pardon is obtained
for sins after baptism; and the holy communion, which administers
fresh supplies of grace to the worthy receiver, and enables him to go
on from strength to strength. Of the first of these three sacraments
it may be remarked, too, that the language is more dogmatical than
would have been used by Cranmer a few years later; “those who have
heathen parents, and die without baptism,” being said to be “damned
everlastingly;”[358]--a phrase, it is true, merely rendered from
the Latin; but the translation exercises on some other occasions a
discretionary power of abridging; and whilst the former rejects the
church of Rome as a church, counting it to be such only in name, and
classing it even with the Turks,[359] the latter tempers its zeal with
a sounder judgment, and omits altogether so suicidal a statement:
the time came when Cranmer would have left these infants to the
uncovenanted mercies of God, saying within himself, “What is that to
thee? Follow thou me.” Still, this is characteristic of the several
stages of opinion through which he had to pass. A similar remark
applies to the doctrine of the holy communion, as here explained. It
is clearly that of the real presence; for though a distinction has
been taken between some expressions in the Latin catechism (which
certainly inculcates the Lutheran tenet), and the corresponding phrases
in the English translation, as though the former asserted the body
and blood of Christ to be _present_ in the sacrament, the latter
to be _received_ therein; still there are many places where such
a distinction does not obtain, and where the argument itself does
not seem to admit of it.[360] But, after all, why has it been made a
matter of reproach against Cranmer, that he was first a Catholic, then
a Lutheran, and lastly a Zuinglian in his notions on the Communion;
successively a believer in transubstantiation, in the real and in the
spiritual presence of the body and blood of Christ? This he was: for,
the first opinion he maintained when he argued against Lambert;[361]
the second, when he published his Catechism; the last, when he wrote
his book upon the sacrament. Gardiner might take advantage of such
changes, as in fact he did, and have his sneer; but nothing could be
more natural than that a sincere man, only intent on following out
truth, lead where it might, should have arrived at it by degrees, and
by precisely such degrees as these--that he should see men as trees
walking, before he saw them as men; and nothing can argue more strongly
the sound and sober principles upon which the Reformation proceeded,
than this its gradual advance. It was not, we find, without patient
investigation, and the successive abandonment of every false position,
as it proved itself to be such, that it ultimately attained the strong
ground from which it has never since been dislodged.
This catechism (it may be remarked) has been sometimes confounded with
the short form contained in our Prayer Book. The latter, however, was
of genuine English growth, though of doubtful origin: Strype assigns
it expressly to Nowell;[362] but the modern biographer of the Dean of
St. Paul’s questions his title to it, and rather gives it to Poinet,
afterwards Bishop of Winchester.[363] In any case, Cranmer appears to
have reviewed and digested it, not without the able co-operation of
Ridley.[364] It made a part of the Liturgy of King Edward, of which
more will be said in its proper place, being inserted in the Office
for Confirmation. Nor has any material change been since introduced
into it, except that the explanation of the Sacraments was added in
the reign of James I., the original Catechism having ended with the
Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer.
The same year, 1548, came out another work, by which the cause of the
Reformation was still more essentially served, and the structure of the
church advanced, the _Office of the Communion_. It was compiled
chiefly out of the Roman missal, of which it is often a literal
translation, by “sundry of his Majesty’s most grave and well-learned
prelates and other learned men in the Scriptures,” and in its first
shape retained (so it was afterwards thought) some particulars of its
original, which would have been better modified or suppressed. It
underwent like the other Offices of which more will be said presently,
a rigid revision by Martyr and Bucer before its re-appearance in 1552,
for the benefit of whose remarks the whole was turned into Latin (so
pains-taking were the founders of our Church); and prayer for the dead,
the invocation of the Holy Ghost upon the elements, and a certain bias,
or what might have been mistaken for such, towards the real presence,
were corrected, but with a delicate hand and admirable judgment
though they were still in after-times those amongst the non-jurors
who maintained that the changes were not to its advantage; and even
Laud, it has been observed, in the composition of his Liturgy for the
episcopalian church of Scotland, has in some things shown a preference
to the first over the amended form.[365]
Here again have we to remark and admire the moderation of the
Reformers: they did not unmannerly reject those Offices of the Church
which, however corrupted, lost themselves in a fathomless abyss of
years, and might even have partaken of something of the spirit of an
apostolic age; for though the Clementine liturgy, to which the Missal,
like many other liturgies of various countries and dates, owes many of
its elements, is found in a work, not indeed of the antiquity to which
its title pretends, the Apostolical Constitutions; still it is a work
of very great antiquity, perhaps antecedent to the Council of Nice; and
therefore it is not visionary to suppose that this primitive Office
contained in it breathes the language of very early times indeed, and
that some of the prayers which for three centuries of persecution might
have lived rather by tradition than in writing, may be here more or
less faithfully preserved. These helps which our Reformers did not
disdain, they showed themselves able to improve, correcting what was
objectionable in doctrine, removing what was offensive in taste, and
often communicating by some happy expression even an additional glow
of devotion to passages in themselves (it might have been thought) too
beautiful to touch; for in the whole compass of English literature,
many as are the excellent versions of ancient writings which it can
boast, it would be in vain to look for any specimens of translation
(merely to put the case thus) so vigorous, so simple, so close, and
yet so free from all constraint, as are afforded by the Offices of
our Church. An example taken at random may suffice to acquit us of
all charge of declamation. It shall be one of the Prefaces; that for
Easter. Thus it runs in the Missal:--
“Verè dignum et justum est, æquum et salutare, Te quidem, Domine, omni
tempore, sed in hoc potissimùm gloriosius prædicare, cùm Pascha nostrum
immolatus est Christus. Ipse enim verus est Agnus, qui abstulit peccata
mundi; qui mortem nostram moriendo destruxit, et vitam resurgendo
reparavit. Et ideo cum Angelis et Archangelis, cum Thronis et
Dominationibus, cumque omni militiâ cœlestis exercitûs, hymnum gloriæ
tuæ canimus, sine fine dicentes, Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus
Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt cœli et terra gloriâ tuâ, Hosanna in Excelsis.
Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini, Hosanna in Excelsis.”
Let any man attempt to express this sublime appeal to God in his
mother-tongue for himself, and then he will know how to appreciate the
ease with which it is effected by those gifted men, to the worth of
whose labours our own generation is not, perhaps, sufficiently alive,
in the following manner:--
“It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should, at all
times and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord, Holy Father,
Almighty Everlasting God. But chiefly are we bound to praise thee for
the glorious resurrection of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is
the very Paschal Lamb which was offered for us, and hath taken away the
sin of the world; who by his death hath destroyed death, and by his
rising to life again hath restored to us everlasting life. Therefore
with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud
and magnify thy glorious name, evermore praising thee, and saying,
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts; heaven and earth are full of thy
glory: glory be to thee, O Lord, most High.”
Nothing can go beyond this, unless it be some of our Collects, very
many of which are almost literal versions of those of the Missal; and
were more wanted for occasional purposes; and possibly some might be
added to our Liturgy with advantage; more might be found in this same
exhaustless mine. Here, again; let us to the testimony. The collect for
Palm Sunday is this:--
“Omnipotens, sempiterne Deus, qui humano generi ad imitandum
humilitatis exemplum, Salvatorem nostrum, carnem sumere et crucem
subire fecisti: concede propitius, ut et patientiæ ipsius habere
documenta, et resurrectionis consortia mereamur per eundem Dominum.”
How free, yet how faithful, is the copy:--
“Almighty, everlasting God, who of thy tender love towards mankind,
hast sent thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ to take upon him our flesh,
and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind might follow
the example of his great humility: mercifully grant that we may both
follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his
resurrection, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The Office of the Communion though soon combined with the other
Offices, appears at first to have been published by itself, and before
any other service;[366] it being important to provide a substitute
for the Mass with as little delay as possible. At the end of the same
year, however, (1548) the Book of Common Prayer was prepared, and
submitted to parliament; and in 1549 it was put forth by authority,
and was appointed to supersede every other form. It was drawn up by
the same hands,[367] and upon the same principles as the Office of
the Communion; and as the Missal had been laid under contribution
for the latter so was the Breviary for the former, and the ancient
Liturgies for both. In that of Jerusalem, of St. James as it is called,
and of which the reader may find the substance in a popular form in
the “Devotions of Bishop Andrews,” many of the elements of our own
beautiful Liturgy may be discovered; and the volume of matter which
our earlier church prayers in general pour forth, as compared with
the more jejune productions of later times, may be in a great measure
imputed to the liberal use which our Reformers made of the devotions
of generations gone by, and to that modesty which was content to learn
from the spirits of just men now made perfect how to pray. But besides
these more ancient sources, from which so much of our Prayer Book was
derived, a Liturgy recently drawn up by Melancthon and Bucer, for the
use of the archbishopric of Cologne, supplied many other hints. This,
however, was itself no effusion of the moment, but was constructed (as
might have been expected from the scholarship of its authors) out of
the treasures which they found in the devotional forms of other days.
Calvin had, indeed, produced a Liturgy of his own, preferring to be
the author rather than the compiler, which he published at Geneva,
as the form of that church, in 1545, but to this our Liturgy, as it
first stood in 1549, does not bear the slightest resemblance. Whilst,
however, the latter was under revision, previous to its republication
in 1552, and in the hands of those foreign divines of whom mention has
already been made, the substance of Calvin’s work was printed in London
by Valerandus Pollanus, his successor at Strasburg, then a refugee in
England, with some additions of his own, and this (as was most natural)
was not overlooked by men busily engaged in a similar task, and did
probably suggest the introductory sentences, Exhortation, Confession,
and Absolution, which were then for the first time prefixed to our
Daily Prayer. Nor is it doubtful that to the appearance of this same
work at that particular moment we are indebted for the supplement to
the Communion Service of the Ten Commandments, with the Responses, the
latter of which, indeed, are very nearly translations from Pollanus.
Still the temper of our Reformers is shown even here, and that middle
way observed by them, which often constrains them to quit the guidance
of these foreign theologians, and speak for themselves. Both in the
Confession (and particularly that in the Communion Service) and in the
Absolution, which was taken from Pollanus and not from Calvin, who
did not adopt any form of the kind, extreme expressions with regard
to human depravity to be met with in the originals are studiously
suppressed or qualified in the imitations, as if the morbid anatomy
of our nature was not the theme on which they delighted to dwell,
satisfied with having at least trampled under foot all pretensions of
merit on man’s part, and with having vindicated the _exclusive_
claim of our Lord’s cross and passion to the salvation of a race fallen
at any rate from a pernicious height.[368]
The time of day at which the offices of the Prayer Book, thus
completed, were performed, is not easily determined; and peremptorily
as some have asserted that our morning service for Sundays consists of
three entire services intended for three several hours of prayer, and
extravagantly long, merely owing to this clumsy consolidation of them
all, it would not be easy to prove that such division did ever in fact
obtain. Two services probably are united: the Morning Prayer strictly
so called, being one; the Litany and Communion the other;--but that the
two latter again were ever separated seems very doubtful, or, indeed,
that the first continued for any great while after the Reformation to
be severed from the rest. That such was the case originally there are
many reasons for believing. It naturally succeeded to the _matins_
of the Roman Catholic church, as the Litany and Communion did to the
_High-Mass_;[369] and it would, therefore, be very likely that
the hours in either case would also correspond. Moreover, in all the
early Common Prayer Books, even in the very first, there is a Rubric,
which directs such as intend to partake of the Communion “to signify
their names to the curate over night, or else in the morning before
the beginning of Morning Prayer _or immediately after_;”[370] a
phrase which argues some interval between the two services, such as
might suffice for considering the qualifications of the candidates, and
for providing elements proportioned to the numbers who would attend.
Neither is there wanting some internal evidence of the Morning Prayer
being at first said betimes--“O God, who hast safely brought us to the
_beginning_ of this day, defend us in the same,” being a phrase
scarcely pertinent to any other prayers than orisons.[371] On the
contrary, there are reasons still more satisfactory for thinking that
the Litany was succeeded by the Communion Service without any pause
whatever. In the injunctions of King Edward, put forth in 1547, there
is one to this effect, that “immediately before _High Mass_,
the priests, with other of the quire shall kneel in the midst of the
church, and sing or say plainly and distinctly the _Litany_ which
is set forth in English with the suffrages following.”[372] There is
every reason to believe that this was in substance the Litany still in
use, for it had already appeared in Henry’s Primer; but however that
might be, the union which it exhibits between such Litany whatever
it was, and the High Mass, prepares us to suppose that a similar
arrangement was likely to ensue with regard to the same or any new
Litany and the Communion Service. And that such did ensue is made still
more manifest by the injunctions of Queen Elizabeth in the first year
of her reign; in one of which the very same clause again occurs word
for word, except that for “High Mass” there is actually substituted
“the time of _communion of the sacrament_.”[373] Indeed the
Communion Service could scarcely fail of being annexed to the Litany,
since it soon came to pass that the former was seldom read throughout,
the sacrament ceasing to be administered weekly, as was at first
contemplated, and recurring at least in country churches, as at present
only five or six times a year.[374] Nor is this all: in the first
Common Prayer Book of Edward VI. it was ordered, that “upon Wednesdays
and Fridays, though there were none to communicate with the priest,
yet, _after the Litany ended_, the priest should put upon him a
plain alb or surplice with a cope, and say all things at the altar
appointed to be said at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper until
after the offertory.” Whence it is clear, that when there were persons
to communicate (which the rubric seems to presume would always be
the case on Sundays,) the Litany and Communion service went together;
and that when there were none such, still the Litany was immediately
followed by the Communion Service as far as to the end of the prayer
for the whole state of Christ’s church militant. How long this
arrangement continued does not appear; but whether from the difficulty
of gathering together a congregation at break of day, discipline being
now relaxed, or from whatever other cause, within the first century
after the Reformation the Church seems to have lapsed into the present
practice, and to have combined its services into one. Bishop Hall in
his contemplations makes the incident mentioned in the first Book of
Samuel--that “they of Ashdod arose _early_ on the morrow to visit
Dagon”--a vehicle for reproof of the lukewarmness of his own times,
saying, “The morning is fittest for devotion; then do the Philistines
flock to the temple of their god;” and adding, “what a shame it is
_for us to come late to ours_!”[375] as though in his day, and he
died in 1656, at the age of eighty-two, there were generally matins
no longer. And Herbert, in describing categorically the Sunday duties
of his Country Parson, expresses himself to the same effect:--“Having
read divine service,” says he, “_twice fully_, and preached in the
morning and catechised in the afternoon, he thinks he hath, in some
measure, according to poor and frail man, discharged the public duties
of the congregation.”[376]
The length of our church service, therefore, of which we now hear so
much, and the repetitions it contains, are evils, if evils they be,
which have been practically existing almost from its first formation;
which a Hammond, a Sanderson, and a Taylor could tolerate without
a complaint but too happy; (as were then their congregations also,
for those were not fastidious days,) if they were permitted in their
secret assemblies to give utterance to these burning words with which
the great Reformers had furnished them; nor scrupulously counting
how often they were taught to pour forth the Lord’s Prayer; as they
counted not how often they were taught to cry out in the self-same
phrase for the Lord to have mercy upon them; as David counted not how
often he exclaimed “My son, my son;” or as these critics themselves,
it is presumed, would not count their own iterations when they were
suing earnestly for their lives. Such are not vain repetitions; and
it is to be hoped, that an age so little fitted for the task as
this by any theological attainments, will pause before it attempts
to improve upon the labours of a Cranmer, who, according to the
testimony of one of the ripest scholars of his time, Peter Martyr,
nor he, by any means a creature of the archbishop, “had diligently
noted with his own hand every one of the fathers; had digested into
particular chapters, with a view to the controversies of his day,
councils, canons, and popes’ decrees pertaining thereto, with a toil,
and diligence, and exactness, which would seem incredible to any but
an eye-witness; who both publicly and privately, and by a marvellous
strength of learning, quickness of wit, and dexterity of management,
had asserted what he held to be true from the thorny and intricate
cavils of sophisters;”[377] and who pronounced concerning this very
Book of Common Prayer, “that no man could mislike that godly book that
had any godliness in him joined with knowledge;”[378]--Moreover that
an age, which for a long time, unchastened by any national calamity,
has suffered much of that spirit of devotion to escape which animated
the holy men of old, who were ever compelled to walk with their lives
in their hand, and who were, in fact, called upon at length to lay
them down, will not be allowed to communicate its narcotic influence
to our Liturgy, and quench in any degree the ashes of the martyrs. In
truth, it is impossible to contemplate the projects of our Liturgical
Reformers without something of alarm, lest, whilst with the best
intentions in the world they “dandle the kid,” they should clumsily
kill him nevertheless.
If, however, changes there must be after all--if old things must
here, too, pass away, and all things become new--be the conditions
those proposed by the sagacious South, and all apprehensions will be
hushed. “Let us but have our Liturgy continued to us, as it is, till
the persons are born who shall be able to mend it, or make a better;
and we desire no greater security against either the altering this, or
introducing another.”[379]
Besides providing these various forms of public devotion, our Reformers
extended their care to those of the closet and household; and in
“The Primer, or Book of Private Prayer, needful to be used of all
Christians” (for so its title runs), and of which numerous editions
appeared from the dawn of the Reformation under Henry down to the
accession of Mary, successively portraying its progress by their
improvements upon one another, scriptural petitions are contained
suitable to all sorts and conditions of men, and almost to every state
of body or mind to which they are liable. Here are graces before
meat--addresses to God “both when we wake and when we seek his gift of
sleep;”--when we are “very sick,” and when our health is recovered--for
such as have an unquiet conscience, or an injured name--for such as
are in poverty or affluence--for kings and judges, gentlemen and
merchants, lawyers and labourers, parents and children, husbands and
wives, masters and servants--significant all, of the manner in which
the Reformers laboured to introduce a religious principle into all the
relations and transactions of life whatsoever; to extend its influence
over the whole of society, so that like Elisha stretched upon the
dead child (to use an illustration of Jeremy Taylor’s), it might give
life and animation to every part of the body politic. There is much
simplicity and beauty in the following prayers “for Landlords,” and
“for Householders,” which are extracted as specimens of a work now but
little known, having been overlaid by the extempore effusions of the
days of Cromwell, and never having recovered itself, like the Book of
Common Prayer, since.--[380]
“FOR LANDLORDS.
“The earth is thine, O Lord, and all that is contained therein,
notwithstanding thou hast given the possession thereof to the children
of men, to pass over the time of their short pilgrimage in this vale
of misery. We heartily pray thee to send thy Holy Spirit into the
hearts of them that possess the grounds, pastures, and dwelling-places
of the earth; that they, remembering themselves to be thy tenants,
may not rack and stretch out the rents of their houses and lands; nor
yet take unreasonable fines and incomes; after the manner of covetous
worldlings; but so let them out to other, that the inhabitants thereof
may be able both to pay the rents, and also honestly to live to nourish
their family, and to relieve the poor. Give them grace also to consider
that they are but strangers and pilgrims in this world, having here
no dwelling-place, but seeking one to come; that they, remembering
the short continuance of their life, may be content with that is
sufficient, and not join house to house, nor couple land to land, to
the impoverishment of others; but so behave themselves in letting out
their tenements, lands, and pastures, that after this life they may
be received into everlasting dwelling-places through Jesus Christ our
Lord.”
“FOR HOUSEHOLDERS.
“To have children and servants is thy blessing, O Lord! but not to
order them according to thy word deserveth thy dreadful curse; grant,
therefore, that as thou hast blessed me with an household, so I may
diligently watch, that nothing may be committed of the same that
may offend thy fatherly goodness, and be an occasion of turning thy
blessing into a curse; but that so many as thou hast committed to my
charge may eschew all vice; embrace all virtue; live in thy fear; call
upon thy holy name; learn thy blessed commandments; hear thy holy word;
and avoiding idleness, diligently exercise themselves every one in his
office, according to their vocation and calling, unto the glory of thy
most honourable name.”
Thus far have we accompanied our Reformers in their attempt to raise up
a Church of England, and to establish its doctrines. One important work
more under this head remained still to be done, and to that we must
now advert, the composition of a set of _Articles_ which should
speak with authority the opinions of the church, and secure uniformity
amongst its teachers. Cranmer had entertained this difficult project
in his thoughts long before he executed it; and the spirit in which he
buckled himself to the work may be collected from some demonstrations
which he had previously made. The natural effect of the Reformation
had been to put in motion various conflicting opinions upon matters
of faith and practice; every man challenging to himself the right of
private judgment, and many, no doubt, abusing it; for any principle,
however good, may be misapplied. It was, accordingly, the devout wish
of many of the leading Reformers, both on the Continent and in this
country, that some general creed should be drawn up by a congress of
learned men of all nations, which should bind the whole Protestant
church together, and put an end to these mischievous divisions of
heart. Melancthon appears especially to have pressed such a scheme upon
Cranmer, whom, in his turn, he found nothing loth to pursue it;[381]
for he seems to have entered into a correspondence on the subject with
some of the leading foreign Protestants; and Calvin’s own letters
(for to him he had written amongst others) bear testimony to the
comprehensive views of our archbishop upon this great question.[382] It
failed, however, as the same correspondence indicates; whether from the
troubles at that time prevailing both at home and abroad; whether from
the difficulty which must have been anticipated of constructing any
single form which should be acceptable to so many parties holding so
many opinions; or whether from the intrigues of the Council of Trent,
then sitting, which, taking alarm at the projected unanimity of their
adversaries, and acting upon the old policy of divide and conquer,
despatched their emissaries to the proper quarters, who, feigning
themselves zealous for the Reformation, and preaching those extravagant
doctrines of the Anabaptists, which all sober-minded men lamented and
condemned, scattered apples of discord amongst their enemies, and
dissolved them as a body.[383] But, however this might be, the scheme
was discovered to be impracticable, and Cranmer then contracted his
views, and confined himself to the preparation of Articles for the
Church of England only.[384]
It is of great importance to the right understanding of those which
he at length drew up, to consider the spirit in which they were
framed. Originating in the manner we have said, the principle which
dictated them could scarcely have been one of exclusion, but was
rather intended to allow a latitude, within certain limits to a
conscientious difference of opinion, and to make the fiery scorpion of
bigotry draw in its claws; and concede a just portion of the heavens
to other pretensions besides its own. That the spirit of our Articles
was thus catholic, became apparent in the actual working of them; and
accordingly, when the exclusive doctrines of Calvin triumphed for a
season in this country, and the Westminster divines were called upon
to remodel the church, one of their first acts was to review the
Articles, (a task which they did not complete, probably finding it a
business of too much moderation to suit their present temper,) with
the express design of rendering them “more determinate in favour of
Calvinism[385],” and a similar attack appears to have been meditated
upon them by the same party at the Savoy conference after the
Restoration;[386] sufficient testimonies these, that the exclusionists
did, in fact, feel the Articles (however they may have laid violent
claim to them as their own) to be conceived in a temper inconveniently
liberal, and the net of Cranmer and his coadjutors to have been cast,
in this instance, too wide to meet their approbation.
Nor will a closer examination of the history of their actual
composition lead to any other result. For the model upon which those
of Cranmer of 1553 were formed was the Confession of Augsburg, which
was strictly a Lutheran Confession, Melancthon himself having drawn it
up; and it is a curious fact, and like another to which allusion has
already been made (the frequent invitations sent to this great Reformer
to repair to England and take part in building up her church), a fact
indicating the influence which his character and opinions exercised
on the ecclesiastical proceedings of this country at that time, that
the divinity professorship in Cambridge, which was vacated by Bucer’s
death, in 1551, was not filled up for two years, apparently in the hope
that Melancthon (for whom it was intended) would be persuaded to come
over and occupy it;[387] the interval being precisely that in which
the Articles were concocted. Nor may it be impertinent to remark, that
on their revision under Archbishop Parker, previous to 1562, care was
taken to draw from the same, or at least a similar, fountain for what
was wanting; the additions and emendations bearing token, both in their
matter and language, of having been derived from the Confession of
Wirtemberg; a Confession composed in 1551, and exhibited at the Council
of Trent the following year, and which, like that of Augsburg, was
not Calvinistic, nor Zuinglian, but Lutheran.[388] Indeed, nothing can
be more erroneous than to measure the contemporary by the posthumous
influence of a great name. Milton is not mentioned by Lord Clarendon
(who forgets nobody that stamped his own times), nor yet by Baxter,
whose writings are voluminous, and by whom it was to be expected that
he would be had in honour. And in like manner, splendid as eventually
became the fame of Calvin, it was comparatively inconsiderable when
our church was in building, being eclipsed by the burning and shining
light of Luther’s name; so that whilst a sermon of the latter is
advertised in England in 1547, as a work “of the famous clerk of
_worthy memory_, Dr. Martin Luther,” a treatise of Calvin is sent
forth in 1549 (two years later), as “written by Master John Calvin, a
man of _right excellent learning and no less conversation_,” as
though his fame as yet required the help of a herald;[389] neither,
it may be observed, does the term Calvinist find a place in the pages
of Fox. And though a body of men there was in the times of our first
Reformers, and by them certainly accounted schismatics, to whom the
name of _Free-Willers_ was given, (and a singular instance of
the predominance of the intellectual over the mere animal part of our
nature it is, that the metaphysical questions to which the name points
should have disturbed the prison-house of persons who were about to
die, perhaps, on the morrow, at the stake[390],) still the tenets of
these men were not such as were afterwards called Arminian, but were
strictly Pelagian, being in gross disparagement of a Redeemer’s merits,
and of a Sanctifier’s help, and as such were stoutly combated by the
founders of our Church.[391] That the freedom of the will was not, in
itself, a doctrine offensive to Cranmer, but the contrary, is certain;
and in a Letter to Cromwell, recently published[392] from an original
manuscript in the Chapter-house at Westminster, the Archbishop,
speaking of the seditious conduct of one Sir Thomas Baschurch, a
priest, writes, “At April next coming it shall be three years since
the said Sir Thomas fell into despair, and thereby into a sickness, so
that he was in peril of death. Of this sickness, within a quarter of
a year after, he recovered, but saith he is assured that he shall be
perpetually damned. _My chaplains and divers other learned men have
reasoned with him_, but no man can bring him to other opinion but
that he, like unto Esau, was created unto damnation; and hath, divers
times and sundry ways, attempted to kill himself; but by diligent
looking unto he hath hitherto been preserved.”
Moreover, the selection which Cranmer made of Erasmus’s Paraphrase, as
the exposition of Scripture of which every church was to have a copy,
argues no Calvinistic prejudices, but the very reverse.
The true key, indeed, to the right understanding of the articles (as
was already observed with regard to the homilies) is not so much the
doctrine of Calvin as of the schoolmen; the controversy lying chiefly
between the Protestant and Catholic, and in its paramount interest and
importance absorbing for a season every other. Thus the article of
“Original Sin” is urged with a reference to the scholastic dogma, that
original sin was a mere defect of original righteousness, the latter
being a quality superinduced, and not “the fault and corruption of the
nature of every man;”--the article of “Works before Justification,”
with a similar view to another theory of the subtle doctors, that by
a certain meritorious meetness, _a priori_, for the reception of
God’s grace, the party claimed it as a right _de congruo_, and
that having once received it, he then claimed its further extension as
a right, _de condigno_.[393] These opinions, so calculated to puff
up by making man the originator of his own justification, our Reformers
would not tolerate, and framed their confessions accordingly. It would
not fall within the plan of a work like the present to enter more
minutely into these investigations, which, after all, are as an hedge
of thorns; suffice it to have pointed out the general principle which
should not be lost sight of in forming our judgment of the articles.
Thus considered they will be scarcely thought to determine, or to be
intended to determine, the peculiar points of Calvinistic controversy
either way: they will be rather thought to be composed simply for the
purpose assigned in the title prefixed to the original articles, “for
the _avoiding of controversy_ in opinions, and the establishment
of a _godly concord_ in certain matters of religion;”[394] an
object which was not likely to be obtained by the decided adoption of
any party views, be that party what it might; and, therefore, King
James, according to his declaration prefixed to the Articles, “took
comfort that all clergymen within his realm had always most willingly
subscribed to the Articles established, which is an argument (he adds)
that they all agree in the true usual literal meaning of the said
Articles, and that even in those curious points in which the present
differences lie, men of all sorts take the Articles of the church of
England to be for them.” Yet nothing can be more certain than that in
the time of James the divisions of opinion upon speculative points of
theology were both wide and numerous; high and low church principles
(as they are called) never having been more violently opposed to each
other than then. Here, therefore, as in all other of their measures,
did the Reformers make their moderation known unto all men, not hoping
or desiring to confine religious opinion so closely as thereby to
prejudice religious sincerity, nor expecting that the pyramid of a
national Church would stand firm when set upon an apex instead of a
base.
On a review of these several works by which the Church of England
was restored, it can scarcely fail to be matter of admiration and
wonder, that so fair a fabric should have risen under the hands of the
Reformers out of such disorder, almost at once; that in the very agony
of a first attempt they should have thrown off a comprehensive scheme
of doctrine and devotion which scarcely called for any subsequent
revision; that they should not only have hewn out such admirable
materials, but have brought them, too, in so short a season, to so
excellent a work. In this our day (overcast and troubled as it is)
we can, perhaps, scarcely transfer ourselves, even in imagination,
to the tumultuous age of a Cranmer and a Ridley, or fully appreciate
the sagacity which, under God’s blessing, conducted them through
such conflicting elements with such signal triumph. Yet so it was;
and with the gorgeous ceremonies of the church they had grown up in
soliciting their senses on the one hand, endeared, too, by all the
holy recollections of their youth and even manhood; and contempt for
all decency of apparel and ritual, the natural reaction of former
abuses, assailing them on the other; these judicious men yielded
themselves to neither extreme, but adopting the _middle way_,
(alas! that Milton should bestow upon them no better title for this
than that of halting prelates,[395]) left us a church alike removed
from ostentation and meanness, from admiration of ornament and disdain
of it; a church retaining so much reverence for ancient customs, and
ancient forms, as not rashly to abolish them, and only so much as not
to adopt them blindly. Under the guidance of this principle it was
brought to pass that though this same church was not made to discover
the material flesh and blood of our Lord in the communion, it was
taught to discover (whatever Bishop Hoadley may say to the contrary)
more than mere commemorative emblems; that while she does not presume
to limit the regenerating influence of the Holy Ghost to the single
mode of baptism, and exclude from all possible admission into heaven
every soul of man which has not partaken of that rite, for “the Spirit
which works by means may be not tied to means,”[396] she declares it
generally necessary to salvation; that whilst she teaches the absolute
need of a Saviour and of a Spirit, to restore in us that image of God
which was greviously defaced by the fall, and imputes such restoration
to the merits of a Saviour and the influence of the Spirit, she thinks
it of inferior consequence to determine how far gone from original
righteousness we may be, resting satisfied with the assertion (to
the truth of which every one who knows his own heart must subscribe)
that we are at any rate “very far gone,” “_quam longissime_,” as
far as it is possible, consistently with the possession of a moral
nature at all, and responsibility for our actions; that whilst she
does not allow marriage to be a sacrament, as remembering, that it is
no ratified means of grace, still less does she regard it as a civil
contract, as remembering, also, that in it is signified the spiritual
marriage and unity of Christ and his church, and that male and female
God joined together; that whilst she does not enforce, on pain of
damnation, confession to the priest, or hold the act to be essential
to the forgiveness of the sin, she, nevertheless, solemnly exhorts
such persons as have a troubled conscience, and know not how to quiet
it, to go to a minister of God and open to him their grief, that they
may receive from him the benefit of absolution, together with ghostly
counsel and advice.
With such discretion did our Reformers retain the good which was in
the Church of Rome whilst they rejected the evil, putting the one
in vessels to be kept, and casting the other away; with such temper
did they refuse to be scared by the abuses of past times, or the
scrupulosities of their own, into narrowing needlessly that ground on
which they invited a nation to take its stand, and which they well knew
must be broad to admit of it. And so it came about, that a form of
faith and worship was conceived which recommended itself to the piety
and good sense of the people; to which they reverted with gladness of
heart when evil times afterwards compelled them to abjure it for a
season; towards which, those who have since dissented and withdrawn
from it have so often seen occasion (or if not they, their children,
after them,) to retrace their steps, and tacitly to acknowledge that
whilst they sought meat for their lust, they had rejected angels’ food.
God grant that a church which has now for nearly three centuries,
amidst every extravagance of doctrine and discipline which has spent
itself around her, still carried herself as the mediator, chastening
the zealot by words of soberness, and animating the lukewarm by words
that burn--that a church which has been found on experience to have
successfully promoted a quiet and unobtrusive and practical piety
amongst the people, such as comes not of observation, but is seen in
the conscientious discharge of all those duties of imperfect obligation
which are the bonds of peace, but which laws cannot reach--that
such a church may live through these troubled times to train up our
children in the fear of God, when we are in our graves; and that no
strong delusion sent amongst us may prevail to her overthrow, and to
the eventual discomfiture (as they would find too late to their cost)
of many who have thoughtlessly and ungratefully lifted up their heel
against her!