CHAPTER XIII._Sketch of the Reformation in England

ELIZABETH.--HER ACCESSION.--HER CAUTION.--REFORMATION AGAIN

TRIUMPHANT.--RETURN OF THE EXILES.--JEWEL.--INJUNCTIONS OF

ELIZABETH COMPARED WITH THOSE OF EDWARD.--PROGRESS OF THE

PURITANS.--THE REFORMATION NOT COMPLETED. CONCLUSION.

Such was the great agony through which the Reformation was doomed to

pass. But that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die, and

so it proved in this instance. The reign of Mary was the grave of the

cause for a short season, and that of Elizabeth was now to be its

triumphant resurrection. It will not, however, be necessary to pursue

our subject much further, which, from a History of the Reformation,

would soon run into a History of Puritanism, the extreme to which it

degenerated for a while. Into this question it is not our intention

to enter. For the present, little remained to be done, but to repeal

the several laws by which Mary had superseded the acts of Henry and

Edward, and to resume the use of those services and rituals which the

martyrs had provided, and of which the nature and number have been

already told. But Elizabeth proceeded warily. Well as her religious

sentiments were understood, none but the most attentive observer could

have at first detected them in her conduct. A figure of Truth greets

her with a translation of the Bible in its hand; she takes the book

and reverently kisses it. A court buffoon beseeches her to restore to

freedom four prisoners long bound in fetters, Mathew, Mark, Luke, and

John; she answers that she must first endeavour to know the minds of

the prisoners themselves. At her coronation in Westminster Abbey, she

partakes of the mass;[457] on Christmas day, which was about a month

later, she demurs to hear it.[458] The puritans make haste to pull

down the images; she bids them hold their hand. Unlicensed preachers,

be they of what denomination they may, Catholics or Protestants she

silences alike. The marriage of the clergy, much as the measure was

desired by the leaders of the Reformation, she refuses, connives at,

at last reluctantly concedes. She offends the zealots of both parties,

for she openly espouses the cause of neither;[459] but she makes that

party her own, which represents the sober, the stable, the somewhat

phlegmatic good sense of the English people; a party without which

no government, however brilliant, can be safe; and with which none,

however unattractive, can be long in danger. Such policy was natural to

herself;--“My sweet sister _Temperance_,” was the name by which

her brother loved to call her; and, moreover she had been nursed in the

school of caution, and for years one word or deed of indiscretion might

have cost her her head. Such policy, too, was after the heart of Cecil,

perhaps the sagest of her counsellors, who now taught his mistress

to thread her way, as he had hitherto threaded his own, through most

dangerous and difficult times, with the sagacity of a wizard. The

outset of Elizabeth’s reign, indeed, was perhaps the masterpiece of

his tactics; and years afterwards, when the crisis was passed and the

Reformation established, he appealed to that period, as well he might,

in proof of his successful devotion to the cause of truth.[460] Still

Elizabeth was working her way underground, and by measures which

whilst they did not provoke notice, would not fail to produce fruits.

Thus, though she would not exclude Roman Catholics from her privy

council, she would yoke them with such colleagues as were friendly to

the Reformation, and were at the same time of talents so extraordinary

as would readily obtain the mastery in debate. Though she would not

weed out of the commission of the peace Roman Catholic magistrates, she

would regulate her new appointments with a view to serving the cause

she had secretly at heart. She would not compel, or attempt to compel,

a Roman Catholic parliament by force to make the laws she desired,

but she would take care to influence the elections in such a manner

as to secure the return of members who would do so. Her first object

appears to have been to soothe the country: to maintain the authority

of the law, be it as yet what it might; to establish her own position

as monarch; and thus to possess herself of a basis on which she might

proceed to build, at her leisure, the permanent prosperity of her realm.

Her parliament assembled, and never did a parliament meet under

circumstances more imperative: to its wisdom it was left to order and

settle all things upon the best and surest foundations; and accordingly

it passed the two great acts by which the alliance between church and

state was established, those of Supremacy and Uniformity; neither of

them, indeed, now enacted for the first time, but both statutes of

Henry or Edward, with certain amendments, revived.

Against the Act of Supremacy some objections were urged in the

parliament, and some scruples out of it; both, no doubt, proceeding

from the same quarter. It was a scandal to place a woman at the

head of the church, whose voice was not to be heard in it; yet the

principle (it was argued) was acknowledged in a degree by the Catholics

themselves, who had no difficulty in recognising the authority of

an abbess, though of a nature in many respects much more strictly

ecclesiastical, than that with which it was proposed to invest the

queen.[461] Neither was there any disposition in her Majesty to

challenge an authority to minister in the church (as was maliciously

given out,) or, indeed, any other authority than such as had been

enjoyed by her father and brother of famous memory.”[462] By the Act

of Uniformity, the exclusive use of the Book of Common Prayer in the

public services was enjoined under pain of imprisonment, and eventually

of deprivation; whilst a respect for it was further exacted by

penalties against those who should teach or preach to the disparagement

of the same; and (what was a measure of more questionable expediency,

as well as right) against those who should refuse to resort to their

parish churches to hear it.[463] Meanwhile, it should be added, some

few alterations had been made in the liturgy, dictated by a wish not

to give needless offence to the Roman Catholics, but to win them,

if possible, still to remain in a church which ever professed to be

the restoration rather than the rival of their own. In the end, all

the parochial clergy, with the exception of eighty individuals, took

the oath of supremacy, and conformed. Not so the bishops: they all,

save one, were recusants, as were also many deans, heads of colleges,

and prebendaries, and were consequently deprived. It is unfair to

attribute an act apparently conscientious to an unworthy motive, but

it was suspected that a recusancy so general amongst one order of

ecclesiastics, and that the highest, was preconcerted, more especially

as many or all of them had subscribed to the supremacy of Henry and

Edward; and that it was not wholly independent of the notion that the

Queen would find it difficult, in the actual condition of the church

to fill up their places to her satisfaction, and would descend to a

compromise.[464] The difficulty, too, whatever it was, was augmented,

it might be thought, by the numerous vacancies which the sickness

recently prevailing in the country had created amongst the upper ranks

of the clergy. If such, however, were the speculations, they were

fallacious. That great company of preachers was overlooked, who had

been living in exile, and were now eager to return;--persons but ill

qualified, by their long habits of necessary frugality and retirement,

to succeed to the purple of their episcopal predecessors,[465]

and not having that in their looks which men would willingly call

master, yet scholars ripe and good, Christians, moreover, sobered

by adversity, and in many instances found to possess, under a mean

aspect, perhaps, a genius that was vast. Out of these were drafted

many recruits; Jewel, the Coryphæus of them all, a man, indeed, of

matchless learning, which he nevertheless wields, ponderous as it is,

like a plaything: of a most polished wit; a style, whether Latin or

English, the most pure and expressive, such as argues a precision in

the character of his ideas, and a lucid order in the arrangement of

them, quite his own. His “Apology” and his “Defence” of it, were the

crowning works of the Reformation, and may be regarded, on the whole,

as those in which its doctrines are put upon record by one the best

qualified of all men to assert them with authority, both from his

intimate knowledge of the subject, the personal intercourse he had

enjoyed with its chief promoters, and the favourable moment at which

he wrote. But whilst some of these exiles were thus the pillars of

their church, others were the reeds. Such were Cartwright, appointed

to the Margaret professorship in Cambridge, and Sampson, to the

deanery of Christ-church. What could come of these ministers, or of

others like to these, but a plentiful harvest of non-conformity in the

generation of students brought within the influence of their example

and teaching; destined themselves to impart it in their turn to the

several parishes throughout England in which their lots might happen

to be cast? Here, then, was a schism, violent enough to endanger even

a long-established church, much more one so recently settled as our

own. But besides the Sampsons and Cartwrights, extravagant schismatics,

there was another and a larger class behind, good men indeed, but,

perhaps, too gentle for the times, the class of lukewarm churchmen, who

still strengthened the hands and ministered to the purposes (however

unwittingly) of spirits more determined than themselves.[466] Such

was Pilkington, bishop of Durham,[467] and even Grindal, bishop of

London,[468] both Marian exiles, and neither of them very cordial

fellow-workers with Parker, himself not an exile. For here was the

origin of these religious distinctions: the former leaning to the

puritan;--Grindal himself being the Algrind of Spenser, whose praises

of him bespeak the party with which he was identified;[469]--the latter

leaning to the Roman Catholic. Nor did the division expire with this

generation; Abbot and Laud still presenting the same contrast in the

next, when the church was upon the eve of that dissolution which was

the issue of the whole. Still the puritan principle, violently as it

worked, subversive as it was of much that was innocent and much that

was holy, had this to redeem it, that it purged out of the kingdom,

effectually and for ever, the popery (we can use no other word to

express our meaning) which lingered in its veins, and which, without

the application of a strong antidote, might once more have penetrated

to its vitals. For the spirit of popery, properly so called, always

active, and now the more so from the ill-disguised claims of the Queen

of Scots to the throne of England, had been recently recruited, it

must be remembered, by the institution of the order of Jesuits, which,

springing up in the age of the Reformation, aimed at directing the

general movement, both in religion and politics, to the advantage of

the Bishop of Rome, whose devoted servants they professed themselves.

The rules, the activity, and the learning of this society rendered

them formidable to any Protestant state, and added not a little to

the perplexities of Elizabeth’s position, who, whilst she feared the

levelling and anti-monarchical principles of the Puritans, otherwise

her natural allies against these champions of the Pope, was in still

greater jeopardy from a hostile order, universal in its influence,

secret in its operations, sagacious as herself in its councils; and if

at length her government proved that it bore not the sword in vain, but

smote with somewhat of a ruthless hand, it was rather in self-defence

against political agitators that it so acted, than in violation of

the rights of conscience. For certainly the severity did not begin

till after her subjects had been absolved from their allegiance by a

Pope’s bull,[470] neither did it ever manifest itself against woman or

child; a distinction this, between the punishments of Elizabeth and the

persecutions of Mary, sufficient in itself to point out that it was

the disloyalty, and not the creed, of the parties that drew upon them

the vengeance of the Queen; and to confirm the assertion of Cecil in

his “execution of justice,” that no one was put to death by Elizabeth

for his religion only,[471] as well as a similar vindication of her

policy advanced with much detail in a letter of Walsingham’s--a policy

which, he contends, was ever regulated by two rules, “to deal tenderly

with consciences, but not to suffer causes of conscience to grow to be

matters of faction.”[472]

The two important statutes of which we have spoken were followed

up in the same year by injunctions of the Queen, after the manner

of those of her brother. They are expressed, indeed, so far as the

case admits, in the very same words as those of Edward twelve years

before. Wherever, therefore, a change is introduced, there must have

been a reason for it, and an index is thus obtained of the progress

of opinion, the more satisfactory because quite incidental.[473]

Thus, on a comparison of the two sets, it will be found, that the

Roman catholic religion is treated with less courtesy by Edward than

by Elizabeth. In the injunctions of the former we read “of kissing

and _licking_ of images:” in those of the latter the offensive

expression is expunged. So again, in the first, the power of the Pope

is said to be justly “rejected, _extirpated_, and taken away

_utterly_:” in the others, it is thought enough to declare that

it is “justly rejected and taken away.” These denounce the abuses of

the Sabbath--“a day on which God is more offended than pleased, more

dishonoured than honoured, because of idleness, pride, drunkenness,

quarrelling, brawling, which are most used on such days; the people,

nevertheless, persuading themselves sufficiently to honour God on

that day, if they hear mass and service; and then is suggested a

more excellent way of keeping the Sabbath holy: in those of Elizabeth

the wholesome suggestion is retained, but the sabbatical picture is

suppressed.” It may be questioned, however, whether this omission was

made altogether in deference to the feelings of the Roman Catholics:

perhaps the progress of puritanism had already begun to correct such

gross disorders; for it must be admitted, we apprehend, that the more

decent and devout observance of Sunday, for which England is still

remarkable, not only above catholic, but even above other reformed

countries, is to be greatly ascribed to this all-powerful principle;

its stern decrees still felt to impart to the character of that day a

sobriety, though not longer a gloom. For, pursuing the same comparison,

we shall find other symptoms of the puritan being now in the ascendant.

Thus, according to Edward’s commands, images, shrines, pictures, and

the like are to be destroyed, nor any memory of the same to be left in

walls and glass windows. Elizabeth, however, adds, that “the walls and

glass-windows shall be nevertheless preserved,” as though the crusade

against all ecclesiastical ornaments had already begun. Again, by

Edward’s injunctions, unlicensed preachers are not to be admitted into

a pulpit. Those of Elizabeth, however, go farther, not allowing even

licensed preachers to officiate out of their own parishes, unless they

have a special license for this, as though itinerancy had commenced.

Then, in the latter, we find certain supplementary clauses not in the

injunctions of Edward, all pointing to the same conclusion. One against

the growth of heresies, contrary to the faith of Christ and his Holy

Spirit; still a foretaste of the speculative imaginations of the next

century. Another against disturbing the congregation in the time of

sermon; a practice afterwards so common, and of which Bishop Bull’s

debate with the brawling Quaker is a characteristic instance.[474]

A third, for the better regulation of singing in churches; not,

indeed, absolutely forbidding the use of music, but reducing it to

much greater simplicity; a concession, as far as it went, to the

same party, who would willingly have ejected all organs, and allowed

no psalmody whatever, but such as was strictly congregational.[475]

Meanwhile the secret of this growing strength of the puritan cause

is discovered in other allusions, contained in the same injunctions,

to the penury of the church, and the ignorance of its ministers; the

natural effect of the late pillage and misapplication of its revenues:

for here we encounter, not without some feelings of humiliation, such

provisions as these (_ex pede Herculem_): that no priest shall

marry without permission given by the bishop and two justices of the

peace living next to the place where the woman hath made her most abode

before marriage, nor without the good will of her parents or next

kinsfolk; or, for lack of such, of “_her master or mistress where

she liveth_.” And again, that “such as are but _mean readers_

shall peruse over before once or twice the chapters and homilies, to

the intent they may read to the better understanding of the people,

and the more encouragement of godliness.” This is a glimpse of a sad

picture; but it is such as the sketch given in a former chapter[476]

of the condition of the clergy under King Edward must have prepared

us to expect. The Reformation was still too recent an event, and had

been effected by means too violent, for the great good that was in it

to have developed itself. The fountain had been thoroughly troubled,

and time was wanting for it to defecate, as well as an infusion,

perhaps, of some fresh elements that should expedite the process of

precipitation. These Cranmer would have supplied had he been allowed

to complete his own idea. But his untimely death, and the selfish

passions of men too strong for him, thwarting him whilst he lived,

scanted the Reformation of much that should have belonged to it, and

consigned it to posterity a noble but still an unfinished work--a

work in which there is every thing to admire, and yet something to

desiderate.

Thus it has been said that the Reformation left the church without

_discipline_; a defect which our commination-service confesses and

laments; but it was one from which the Roman catholic church itself

was not exempt, for the rivalry which existed between the secular and

regular clergy, and again between the several orders of the latter,

was, as we have seen, fatal to discipline. Still, whatever the defect

was, it was not the fault of the reformers that it was suffered to

remain. The canon laws were, indeed, no longer strictly applicable

to the church, constructed as it now was: but an attempt was made

to accommodate them, or to substitute for them such as were thought

better. A code, which he called Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum,

was drawn up by Cranmer, consisting of fifty-one titles, with an

appendix, after the manner of the Digest of Justinian. It underwent

many revisions in private during the reigns of Henry and Edward, but

was not produced. It was revived, with a view to its legal enactment,

by the Puritans in the lower house of parliament under Elizabeth;

but the Queen thought it trenched upon her supremacy, and would not

hear of it. It was reprinted, and no more under Charles I., and was

suggested once again to public notice by Bishop Burnet.[477] All,

however, would not do; it fell to the ground; whether originally from

the mere accident of the deaths of Henry and Edward before it was fully

matured; whether from the difficulty of maintaining penal statutes in

general in a church founded upon the principles of the Reformation; or

whether, as some have thought, from the extreme severity of the code

itself. That the latter circumstance was the cause of its non-enactment

it is difficult to believe; for, severe as it may seem to us, and as

it undoubtedly is, the distinction which is made in it between the

essential and unessential doctrines of Christianity, and the exclusive

application of the capital laws against heresy to the former, was the

first instance of any such discrimination being exercised.[478] and

may be fairly considered as a step in the progress of the principles

of toleration; as the mitigation rather than the approval of penal

excesses; for so little was that age prepared to revolt at the

provisions laid down in it, that Bishop Jewel, who must have ranked

rather with the liberal than the dogmatical party of his own day; who

had lived in exile at Frankfort, a liberal school; himself, therefore,

a victim of persecution; and who wrote many years after Cranmer; seems

to approve the same theory of punishment, and perhaps the same scale of

it; for whilst he vindicates freedom of opinion up to a certain point,

still such as have a _wicked_ opinion either of God the Father, or

of Christ, or of the Holy Ghost, or of any other point, of Christian

religion, they being confuted by the Gospel of Christ, he would plainly

pronounce detestable and damned persons, and would defy them even unto

the devil; neither would he leave them so, but would also severely

and straitly hold them in by _lawful and politic punishments_,

if they fortune to break out any where and bewray themselves.[479]

These are very strong words. And what is more remarkable still, a

similar line was adopted, nearly a hundred years later, by one who

has been considered the great champion of religious liberty, and in

a work expressly dedicated to the extension of it, and though it is

more than probable that Jeremy Taylor, here, as elsewhere, would not

have had the courage to follow out his own argument to its practical

results, and would have shrunk from “putting to death or dismembering”

the professing Christian, even for “impiety or blasphemy,” or for

opinions (if only such), however “destructive of the foundation of

religion;”[480] yet the theory itself, re-asserted after so long an

interval, and by such an advocate, is enough to prove that Cranmer was

rather in advance of his generation than behind it; and that he is

still to be regarded as the reformer, and not as the bigot.

But there is reason to think that the capital penalties even of his

code would have been mitigated, had he ever actually presented it

to the legislature. Cranmer was becoming daily more tolerant, as he

gradually fell under the influence of a more charitable faith. He had

been shocked, it is said, by the solemn manner in which Edward made

him responsible before God for the life of Joan of Kent; he expressed

himself shortly afterwards of Gardiner in terms significant of a

repugnance to severities;[481] and he was one of those who advised

connivance at the use of the mass by the Princess Mary. With these

tokens of temper before us, it seems fair to infer, that however

greatly Cranmer coveted the establishment of discipline, he would

scarcely have bought it at the price of blood; and that his own

character, by nature one of the most gentle, was asserting itself more

and more even in matters calculated to put it most of all to the

proof. But if discipline, properly so called, be lacking, so much the

rather should those ecclesiastical regulations which are of imperfect

obligation perhaps (and there are many such) be diligently observed

by the clergy, both towards those set over them, and towards those

committed to their charge; the respect or neglect of which is just that

which constitutes the decency or disorder of a church; a distinction

not easy to describe in detail, yet sufficiently intelligible in

itself; nor is it unreasonable to expect that the laity on their part

should see the advantage of such rules, which cannot be onerous, and

cordially co-operate with the clergy to the maintenance of them.

Another particular in which the Reformation was left incomplete, was

in a provision for the sufficient education of the people. The demand,

indeed, for education had not hitherto been great; few boys but such

as were intended for ecclesiastics were made scholars; so that even

Latimer reckons the sons of great laymen or esquires, as he calls

them, interlopers in the universities.[482] The churchman, and no

other, was the clerk; and the convent was in general the academy; it

was so, at least, in a _hundred_ instances, if we understand an

expression used by the speaker of the lower house, in the fourth year

of Elizabeth, aright; who, in his address to the Queen laments the loss

of such a number of places of education.[483] Schools, therefore, in

the present sense of the word, there were few; not more than three,

we believe, in all London. And when Dean Colet founded that of St.

Paul’s on the eve of the Reformation, it was a thing regarded with

some jealousy.[484] Hence it probably was, that the numbers sent to

Oxford and Cambridge (the two great national schools, as they were

then considered) were so extraordinary--thousands where there are

now hundreds; and that the age of the students was so tender. For

on the rapid multiplication of foundation schools throughout the

country in the century after the Reformation, the character of the

universities, we shall find, became changed; the number of students

diminishing, in spite of an increasing population, and the age at

which they entered greatly advanced. Milton’s is said to be the last

instance of corporal punishment in either university--a tradition

which, whether true or false as to the individual, may serve to date

the period of the transition from the past to the present system of

academical education. But of the few schools that existed before the

Reformation, some were seized and sold by the rapacious courtiers,

particularly under the feeble reign of Edward; here was one channel of

education cut off:--the convents were destroyed; here was another:--the

universities were decayed; here was a third:--they were decayed,

because the yeomen who might have been able to send their children

to a school in the neighbourhood, if there had been one, were quite

unable, from a disastrous change in their circumstances, to send them,

as they often had done heretofore, to Oxford and Cambridge:[485] an

education so remote, frugal as the times then were, being comparatively

costly, and such as rendered even the ten groats which Jewel bestowed

upon Hooker, when he called upon the good bishop on his way to his

college on foot, not unwelcome. They were still further decayed from

the same cause as the schools; powerful individuals intercepted and

appropriated their revenues--accordingly very many students were

actually unable to stay “for lack of exhibition and help,”--others did

indeed stay, but in extreme penury. They rose in the morning between

four and five o’clock; at ten they dined, having “a penny piece of

beef amongst four, a few potage made of the same, with salt and

oatmeal, and nothing else:--at five in the evening they had a supper

not much better than the dinner; and, before they went to bed, which

was at nine or ten, being without fire, “they were fain to walk or

run up and down half an hour to get a heat on their feet.” Such was

the condition of what students there were in Cambridge in the days of

Edward the Fifth.[486] Now this declension in the means of national

instruction was the more calamitous because it happened at a moment

when the thirst for knowledge was becoming intense, and when it was

more than commonly desirable that it should be slaked from cisterns

of wholesome waters. Of this our reformers were aware; but again they

were baffled, both they and their king. The larger benefices were,

indeed, charged with the support of one scholar at the university

for every hundred pounds of their annual value: but this was a very

limited provision for the wants of the times.[487] The chantry lands

would have furnished a considerable, perhaps a sufficient, fund for

the purpose, and Edward did so apply them in part, and would gladly

have done so more extensively; but they were devoured by the nobles,

and the moment for royal endowments went by. Happy would it have been,

had it been otherwise. Such grammar schools as he would have planted

over England would have been found “seminaries of sound learning,” and

(what was the first consideration of the founder) “of _religious_

education.” They might have raised up a more literate clergy. They

might have checked, perhaps, the rising extravagances of the Puritans.

They might have sustained the church by the direction they would

have given to public opinion; and dispersed the storm which already

threatened, by conducting, quietly and not unfruitfully, to the earth,

the fierce elements with which the political and religious atmosphere

was already so heavily charged. For they would have been the natural

feeders of the church of England; the visitor, probably one of its

prelates; the teachers, its more learned ministers; the prayers, those

of its services; the catechism, its manual of doctrines--that which

Dean Nowell composed in Latin, and which was afterwards translated

into Greek by Dr. Whitaker, his nephew, for the express use of such

schools, having been approved in convocation, and been acknowledged to

speak the authorised language of the reformers. A few such schools King

Edward did establish, as we have said; but in numbers quite inadequate

to the demands of the nation, which must have been abandoned to gross

ignorance, and to the delusions of every theological empiric (which

was in a great degree the case after all), but for the many private

foundations, still however very insufficient, by which the reign of

Elizabeth, who incorporated them, was distinguished. For these, the

country was indebted to the generous efforts not of ecclesiastics only,

but also of opulent yeomen and tradesmen, the last of whom, having

made an ample fortune, generally in London, the first-fruits of the

commerce of England, often retired to spend it in the place which had

given them birth, and of which they piously endeavoured to relieve

the intellectual and religious wants by erecting a school, connecting

it with the universities by scholarships, and with the church by the

qualifications of its masters. In these institutions, whether of royal

or private foundation, most of our yeomen, shopkeepers, and small

householders who resided within reach of them, besides many of a higher

rank, were heretofore educated; a class of persons which both the

recollection of living men, and still more the records of our domestic

history, lead us to think not less sound in knowledge, nor less sage

and sober in sentiments, not less loyal subjects or less virtuous

citizens, than the more enlightened generation, as it has been called,

which has succeeded them, the sons of our commercial schools. Whilst

by means of those same institutions a way has been commonly opened to

youths of promise, though it may be of humble parentage, into the two

great seats of learning, of which they have often become the brightest

ornaments; and into the church, of which they have no less frequently

proved themselves the most conspicuous and valuable ministers. Perhaps

it may be added, that in either capacity, whether as nurseries of our

laymen or of our clergy, such schools, productive as they have been

of men duly qualified to serve God and their country, would have been

far more so, had the principles upon which they were first founded

been more rigorously observed in times past (for the error has been

discovered, and some pains are now taken to remove it); had religion in

general, its evidences and substance, entered still more largely into

their regular studies; and that particular form of it established in

this kingdom been made a theme of their more habitual instruction and

parental concern.

Another defect imputed to the Reformation is the inadequate support it

provided for the lower orders of the clergy. Four thousand livings,

and upwards, of less than one hundred and fifty pounds a year each,

many very far less, with no parsonage houses whatever, or with such

as the most Sabine economist would pronounce unfit for a clergyman to

occupy;--this is the forlorn condition, as to temporals, in which the

church has stood for a long season; a condition to which it could not

have been reduced, had even a portion of the vast revenues dispersed

at the Reformation been husbanded, and applied to the legitimate

purpose of bettering the situation of the inferior clergy. This,

Cranmer most earnestly desired; but his entreaties and regrets were

alike unavailing. The evil continued, and Jewel took up the subject

in his turn; and pressed the redress of it upon Elizabeth and her

nobles, in his sermons at Paul’s Cross (very curious pictures of the

times); but the spoil was then divided, and restitution was looked for

in vain.[488] Laud made another effort; one of whose projects it was

to move Charles for a grant to buy in impropriations, two of which he

hoped thus to redeem every year; but his chance of success best appears

from the very intention (of which the record was found in his diary)

being made matter of charge against him at his trial. Had the exertions

of these prelates been effective, the very great, but, as things at

present stand, the necessary evil of pluralities and non-residence

would have been prevented, or left without cause or excuse. As it is,

to proscribe the pluralist altogether, would in many cases, be to visit

with utter poverty the meritorious labourer in the vineyard, him and

his little ones; and to insist, in all cases, upon residence, would be,

in some, to say that the village handi-craftsman more lettered than

his fellows, should be again the officiating minister, as he once was

in Edward’s days, and as he was forbidden to be, from the mischief it

occasioned, under Elizabeth. The evil of which we speak is grievous;

but it has been and is decreasing. By help of Queen Anne’s bounty, of

which the origin and history has been briefly told already, a sum of

money advanced for the augmentation of a small living is met with an

equal sum, when the whole is invested in land, so soon as land can be

found; and thus is the income of the poor incumbent improved. And,

by a modern and excellent act of the legislature, empowering him to

mortgage his benefice to the amount of two years’ income, and to bind

his successors as well as himself for the gradual liquidation of the

debt, he is enabled to build a new house, or make an old one habitable;

and thus is his residence encouraged. The beneficial operation of these

two instruments of gradual church reform is more and more manifest

every day. By virtue of them the modest but not mean parsonage is

beginning to appear in many rude and secluded hamlets where before

there had been none: and the advantages of a pastor on the spot,

frugal, indeed, of necessity, but carrying with him the respect which

superior intelligence commands, and the sympathies of those amongst

whom he walks not unseen; whose adviser he is in difficulties, and

peace-maker in disputes; whose houses he visits in sickness and sorrow,

and whose children he teaches the way in which they should go;--these

charities, the attendants upon a resident ministry, are diffusing

themselves over districts where they were once unfelt, and attaching

the inhabitants to our church by the strongest of all ties, “the

cords of a man.” But, alas! the residence must depend upon the house,

and the house upon the income of the benefice: to the improvement of

the latter, therefore, should our efforts be first directed, as the

moving-spring of all; and if, by any equitable means, the fund at the

disposal of the commissioners of Queen Anne’s bounty could be enriched,

great would be the gain. But if lay patrons of small livings, where

they happen to be also impropriators, could be induced to co-operate

with the clergy for this same great object, which is national; if the

generous spirit which animated their fathers, during half a century,

after the Restoration,[489] when they had learned in the day of

suffering the value of their church, and in the moment of joy at its

re-establishment welcomed it with gifts,--if that spirit would stir

in them also; if they would re-annex, as was then done so commonly,

to these their own livings (we ask no more), some portion, however

small, of the tithes which they enjoy, and which were all wrung from

the church; a sacrifice which, from its amount, would scarcely be felt

by many patrons, and which would not, in fact, be an alienation of

so much property, but rather a regulation of the course in which it

should run; a reduction, perhaps, of fifty or a hundred pounds a year

from an elder brother’s rent-roll, to the augmentation to the like

amount of a younger brother’s benefice;--if the patron and impropriator

could be persuaded thus to act, the necessity for non-residence and

pluralities would be still more rapidly diminished, and the national

church would soon be placed in a more impregnable position than she has

ever assumed in this particular, either since the Reformation or before

it. And without urging higher motives, without urging even the feudal

nature of all property in one sense, held, under God, the Lord of all,

on condition of suit and service to be done, and not as an absolute

possession to be dealt with altogether according to the pleasure of the

occupant--without pressing this consideration (which is nevertheless

a sound one), we shall be borne out in saying, that the possessor of

property best secures the permanent enjoyment of it by securing a

righteous population to his country; that the respect or contempt of

the laws of the land in our parishes, and particularly in our rural

parishes, is not a little dependent on the presence or absence of the

village pastor; that to insure the local benefit of his residence,

therefore, may be worth the while of any man who has a stake to lose;

and that, though it may entail upon him the relinquishment of a trifle

which he may strictly call his own; and with which he may certainly do

what he will; still, it may be for his consideration whether there is

not that scattereth and yet increaseth, and whether there is not that

withholdeth more than is meet, and it tendeth unto poverty.

Such is our sketch of this great religious revolution: for which, that

it came when it did, we have surely, in these days, reason to give

God hearty thanks. For to the Reformation we owe it, that a knowledge

of religion has kept pace in the country with other knowledge; and

that, in the general advance of science, and the general appetite for

enquiry, this paramount principle of all has been placed in a position

to require nothing but a fair field and no favour, in order to assert

its just pretensions. We are here embarrassed by no dogmas of corrupt

and unenlightened times, still riveted upon our reluctant acceptance

by an idea of papal or synodical infallibility; but stand with the

Bible in our hands, prepared to abide by the doctrines we can discover

in it, because furnished with evidences for its truth (thanks to the

Reformation for this also!) which appeal to the understanding, and to

the understanding only; so that no man competently acquainted with

them need shrink from the encounter of the infidel; or feel, for a

moment, that his faith is put to shame by his philosophy. Infidelity

there may be in the country, for there will ever be men who will not

trouble themselves to examine the grounds of their religion, and men

who will not dare to do it; but how far more intense would it have

been, and more dangerous, had the spirit of the times been, in other

respects, what it is, and the Reformation yet to come, religion yet to

be exonerated of weights which sunk it heretofore in this country,

and still sink it in countries around us; enquiry to be resisted in

an age of curiosity; opinions to be bolstered up (for they may not be

retracted) in an age of incredulity; and pageants to be addressed to

the senses, instead of arguments to the reason, in an age which, at

least, calls itself profound. As it is, we have nothing to conceal;

nothing to evade; nothing to impose; the reasonableness, as well as

righteousness, of our reformed faith recommends it; and whatever may be

the shocks it may have to sustain from scoffs, and doubts, and clamour,

and licentiousness, and seditious tongues, and an abused press, it will

itself, we doubt not, prevail against them all, and save, too (as we

trust), the nation which has cherished it, from the terrible evils,

both moral, social, and political, that come of a _heart_ of

unbelief.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Advancement of Learning_, Basil Montagu’s edition of Bacon’s

works, Vol. ii. p. 102, Pickering. 1825.

[2] _The Study of Church History Recommended_, being the Terminal

Divinity Lecture, delivered in Bishop Cosin’s Library, April 15,

1834, before the Rt. Rev. the Dean, the Chapter, and the University

of Durham, by Hugh James Rose, B. D., Chaplain to his Grace, the

Archbishop of Canterbury.

[3] The Rev. Professor Keble, advertisement to _the Christian

Year_.

[4] _Of the Church and the Scriptures_, Basil Montagu’s edition,

i. 220.

[5] _The New Testament arranged in Chronological and Historical

order_, ii. 134.

[6] _Concio ad Clerum_, Pratt’s edition.

[7] Mede’s Works, ii. 1061.

[8] Epistola, 709.

[9] “On foot they went, and took Salisbury in their way, purposely to

see the good Bishop, who made Mr. Hooker sit at his own table--which

Mr. Hooker boasted of with much joy and gratitude, when he saw his

mother and friends; and at the Bishop’s parting with him, the Bishop

gave him good counsel, and his benediction, but forgot to give him

money; which when the Bishop had considered, he sent a servant in

all haste to call Richard back to him, and at Richard’s return, the

Bishop said to him, Richard, I sent for you back to lend you a horse

which hath carried me many a mile, and, I thank God, with much ease;

and presently delivered into his hand a walking staff, with which he

professed he had travelled through many parts of Germany; and he said,

Richard, I do not give but lend you my horse; be sure you be honest,

and bring my horse back to me at your return this way to Oxford. And I

do now give you ten groats to bear your charges to Exeter; and here is

ten groats more, which I charge you to deliver to your mother, and tell

her I send her a bishop’s benediction with it and beg the continuance

of her prayers for me. And if you bring my horse back to me I will give

you ten groats more to carry you on foot to the college; and so, God

bless you, good Richard.”--_Izaak Walton’s Life of Richard Hooker._

[10] “New-born;” not as _the Church_, but as the Catholic Church

_reformed_.

[11] The Study of Church History recommended.

[12] Acts, xi. 19.

[13] Acts, xi. 28.

[14] Acts, xviii. 2.

[15] Bede’s Hist. Eccles. 169.

[16] Bede, 233.

[17] Bede, 255. 459. 480.

[18] Bede, 437.

[19] Bede, 34. 158. 169.

[20] Girald, Cambr. apud Hen. Wharton, v. ii. p. 533. Anglia Sacra.

[21] Bede 82. _et seq._

[22] Bede, 116.

[23] Bede died A. D. 735.

[24] Bede, 166.

[25] Angl. Sacra, v. ii. p. 491.

[26] Bede, 339.

[27] Bede, 250.

[28] Bede, 254.

[29] Bede, 322.

[30] Bede, 247.

[31] Bede, 258.

[32] Bede, 271.

[33] Bede, 453.

[34] Bede, 271.

[35] Bede, 322.

[36] Bede, 395, 438.

[37] The very name, purgatory, is heathen. The annual feast of

purification in February was called “Sacrum Purgatorium.” Vide

Augustin. de Civ. Dei, l. vii. c. 7.; also Jewel’s Def. of the Apology,

part ii. c. 16. § 1.

[38] Bede, 122.

[39] Bede, 431.

[40] Bede, 330.

[41] Bede, 94.

[42] Bede, 334. ed. Wheloc.

[43] Præfat. in Leges Aluredi Regis, p. 16. ed. Wheloc.

[44] Bede, 411.

[45] Bede, ed. Wheloc, p. 422. et seq.

[46] Turner’s Ang. Sax. iii. 362.

[47] Measure for Measure, act iii. sc. 1.

[48] Bede, 430.

[49] Bede, 336, 344, 349, 417.

[50] Bede, 164, 315, 431.

[51] This argument is actually urged in favour of the dignity of the

priesthood in the Catechismus ad Parochos, p. 270.

[52] Bede, 78.

[53] Bede, 124. This phrase, however, might only indicate the side

Eadbald would have supported in the Nestorian controversy.

[54] Bede, 446.

[55] Bede, 281.

[56] Bede, 185, 186.

[57] Bede, 351.

[58] Bede, 389.

[59] Bede, 366.

[60] Bede, 374.

[61] Bede, 213.

[62] Bede, p. 441. et seq. Comp. Dante Purgator. ii.

[63] See pp. 206. 329.

[64] Canonicus Lichfeld. de Success. Archiep. Cant. ap. Wharton, Anglia

Sacra, i. 95.

[65] Osbern. ap. Wharton, Angl. Sacr. ii. 89.

[66] Burnet’s Hist. Reform. v. i. 130. v. iii. introd. xvi. fol.

[67] In “The Supplication of Beggars,” they are stated at 52,000.

(See Fox’s Acts and Mon, ii. 280. edit. 1631–2, with the note.) The

number may be exaggerated; but it will seem less extraordinary when

it is remembered that one of the qualifications of a thegn or thane,

a lower class of nobles, having some analogy to the barons of Norman

times, was, that he should have five hides of his own land and a

_church_. (See Turner’s Angl. Sax. ii. 265.)

[68] Angl. Sacr. ii. 91.

[69] Hen. Wharton, Angl. Sacr. i. 126.

[70] Willelm. Malmesb. ap. Wharton, Angl. Sacr. ii. 260.

[71] See Warton’s Hist. of English Poetry, i. 266. 4to.

[72] Angl. Sacr. i. 435.

[73] Angl. Sacr. i. 255.

[74] Angl. Sacr. i. 248.

[75] Angl. Sacr. ii. præf. p. 4.

[76] Angl. Sacr. ii. 480.

[77] Angl. Sacr. ii. 611.

[78] Warton’s Hist. of Poetry, i. 290. 4to.

[79] Erasmi Colloq. Franciscani.

[80] See an Essay on the Government of the Church of England, by George

Reynolds, Archdeacon of Lincoln, p. 101. _et seq._

[81] Warton’s Hist. of English Poetry, i. 292. 4to.

[82] Ibid. i. 290.

[83] Warton’s Hist. of English Poetry, i. 296.

[84] Erasm. Colloq. Franciscani. Chaucer.

[85] Milton, i. 80. Prose Works, Burnett’s ed. Bishop Jewel argues

the question more practically than Milton; and, allowing that there

are many who would teach Christ for Christ’s sake, looks onward to

posterity, and asks of fathers, whether their own zeal will cause

them to “keep their children at school until four and twenty years

old, at their own charges, that in the end they may live in glorious

poverty? that they may live poorly and naked, like the prophets and

the apostles?” and he foretells that the event would be a lapse into

ignorance--Serm. on Ps. lxix. 9.

[86] Erasm. Colloq. Franciscani.

[87] Leges Inæ, 1. Aluredi, 23, 24. Edmundi, 57. Edgari, 62. Bede’s

Eccl. Hist. 178. 291. See also Sharon Turner’s Anglo-Saxons, iii. 248.

_et seq._

[88] Essay upon the Government of the Church of England, by George

Reynolds, 27.

[89] Reynolds, 30.

[90] Bede’s Eccl. Hist. 447.

[91] Reynolds, 31.

[92] Bede, 447.

[93] Angl. Sacr. i. 461.

[94] Angl. Sacr. i. 6. _et seq._

[95] Angl. Sacr. i. 6.

[96] Angl. Sacr. i. 272.

[97] Angl. Sacr. i. 284.

[98] Angl. Sacr. i. 274.

[99] Bede’s Eccl. Hist. 352. 400.

[100] Angl. Sacr. i. 6. 71.

[101] Angl. Sacr. i. 44. 48.

[102] Angl. Sacr. i. 42.

[103] Angl. Sacr. i. 43.

[104] Reynolds, 41. 48, 49.

[105] Reynolds, 36.

[106] Reynolds, 38.

[107] Reynolds, 68.

[108] 27 Hen. 8. c. 28. Stat. of the Realm, iii. 576.

[109] Kennet on Impropriations, 25.

[110] Ibid. 405.

[111] Kennet on Impropriations, 97.

[112] Ryves’s Poore Vicar’s Plea, 15.

[113] Ibid. 21.

[114] Ibid. 7.

[115] Kennet, 35.

[116] Ryves’s Poore Vicar’s Plea, 145.

[117] Monast. Anglic. i. 658.

[118] Kennet, 59.

[119] Strype’s Annals, 177. Latimer’s Sermons, ii. 243.

[120] Strype’s Annals, 181.

[121] Wordsworth’s Eccles. Biog. i. 265, note.

[122] Jewel’s Sermon on Haggai. i. 2.

[123] See Dean Colet’s Serm. in Burnet’s Reform. iii. 28. fol. The

original Latin sermon is given in the appendix to Knight’s Life of

Colet. The passage alluded to is in p. 281.

[124] Strype’s Cranmer, 456.

[125] Ibid. 217, 218.

[126] Colet’s Sermon, printed in 1511, speaks of law,--quæ prohibent

ne clericus sit publicus lusor; and of laws, quæ prohibent clericis

frequentare tabernas, 281.

[127] Latimer’s Sermons, i. 182.

[128] Ibid. 87.

[129] Burnet’s Hist. of Reformation, i. 316. 1st ed. fol.

[130] Strype’s Annals, 87.

[131] Strype’s Cranmer, 169. Fox’s Acts and Mon. i. 538. Ed. 1631–32.

Wordsworth’s Eccl. Biog. i. 287.

[132] Wordsworth’s Eccl. Biog. i. 306. Knight’s Life of Dean Colet, 47.

53. 56. Erasmus supported by his authority the new system of theology,

and defended his friend Colet at Cambridge.

[133] Eccl. Biog. i. 286, note.

[134] Latimer’s Sermons, i. 177.

[135] Shakspeare, Second Part of Henry IV. act. i. scene 2.

“_Fal._ Where’s Bardolph?”

_Page._ He’s gone into Smithfield to buy your worship a

_horse_.

“_Fal._ I bought him in _Paul’s_, and he’ll buy me a horse in

Smithfield.”