in England at the time when the First Prayer Book of Edward VI was
imposed on the English clergy and people. On the face of it there could
be no possibility of allowing this old Ordination service to stand as it
was. The Mass had been changed into a Communion service,--a memorial of
Christ's Passion,--and the doctrinal teaching of the former had been
made, rightly or wrongly, to give place to the Reformed principles
clearly expressed in the latter. The notion of oblation and sacrifice
was now wholly foreign to the Eucharistic teaching, as understood by the
followers of the Lutheran German reformed religion, who had presided
over the composition of the new Prayer Book. It became therefore
necessary to draw up another form for the Ordination of ministers,
conceived on the same doctrinal basis as that of the Book of Common
Prayer.
This new Ordinal was in fact already prepared when the Prayer Book was
issued, and on January 5, 1550, a Bill to sanction it was introduced
into the House of Peers. It gave rise to much discussion, and for
refusing to assent to it one of the bishops was lodged in the prison
where others of the Catholic-minded prelates were already confined. The
"New form and manner of making and consecrating archbishops, bishops,
priests, and deacons" was, however, approved of by Parliament in
anticipation and ordered to be ready for April 1.
The new Ordinal did in regard to the ancient Catholic Pontifical what
the Communion service had done for the Missal. Having first swept away
all the minor Orders and the Subdiaconate, the new form carefully and
systematically excluded every word that could be interpreted to mean
that the candidate was ordained to be a sacrificing priest. For the most
part the new rite was a new composition, drawn up to meet the doctrinal
views as to the Holy Eucharist of the English Reformers of advanced
Lutheran principles. One of the few passages of the Pontifical preserved
in the Ordinal were the words, "Receive the Holy Ghost: whose sins ye
shall forgive," etc, which accompanied the Imposition of Hands after the
ordination in the ancient rite and conferred "the power of the Keys." In
the new rite this subordinate form became the substantial form of the
new Ordination service, although in it there was for a hundred years,
until 1662, no mention of the Order conferred. There can be hardly any
doubt that this omission came about by the adoption of the old form by
the compilers of the new Ordinal. In the case of the Catholic Pontifical
no such specific mention was called for, as when used in that to convey
jurisdiction, the priest was already ordained and had co-celebrated with
the Bishop.
Once more I repeat that I am not here concerned with any discussion as
to whether the new Ordinal was better or worse than the ancient
Pontifical. I desire merely to bring out the facts and to make it clear
that the service of Holy Communion in the Book of Common Prayer and the
Ordination service in a doctrinal point of view go together. They are
the expression of a change, of a serious organic change from the ancient
teachings of the Faith, as expressed in the Missal and Pontifical. The
Prayer Book and the Ordinal of Edward VI were the serious expression of
the deliberate alteration in the Eucharistic teachings of the official
heads of the Church in England at this time. They constituted a break,
clear, sharp and decisive with the past. There can be no doubt of this
in view of the facts. The change may have been for good or for ill, but
it can hardly be denied that it was made, and made not by accident but
of set purpose. It was a deliberate breach in the continuity of teaching
as to the Holy Eucharist and the Sacrifice of the Mass, which had
existed in the Church in England from the earliest days of Christianity;
and the new teaching found its expression in the new formularies. [1]
[1] The subsequent history of the Anglican Church shows that even the
need of Episcopal ordination was not considered absolutely necessary for
the administration of the Sacraments in that Communion. It was not,
indeed, until 1662 that it was legally necessary for a beneficed
clergyman to have been so ordained. Bishop Hooker himself admitted the
ministration and received the Communion from the hands of Saravia who
was a Calvinistic minister. The truth of this position is upheld by the
present Anglican Bishop of Durham in a letter to the London _Times_ of
Dec. 13, 1913. He cites as witnesses: "Bancroft, who carried his
colleagues, including Andrews, with him in consecrating Presbyterian
ministers Bishops for Scotland in 1609; Andrews, who claims 'our
government to be by Divine right, yet it follows not that a Church
cannot stand without it': Ussher, who says (to Du Moulin), after a
solemn assertion of the greatness of Episcopacy, that he is prepared, to
receive the Blessed Sacrament at the hand of the French ministers if he
were at Charenton' . . . and Cosin, asserting in his Will his 'union of
soul with all the orthodox,' 'which I desire chiefly to be understood of
Protestants and the best Reformed Churches.'"
There can be no doubt as to what the ardent Reformers, who had the
matter in hand, intended to do. The press teemed with books of ribald
denunciation of the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Orders of the ancient
Catholic rite were derided in such terms as "greasy and stinking"
Orders. Moreover, the destruction of the altars obviously emphasised the
change which had taken place. The abolition of the Sacrifice and the
Sacrificing priesthood made them obsolete and unnecessary. Bishop
Ridley, a reforming prelate of the most uncompromising type, directed
the Churchwardens of London to pull down the popish altars and to
procure in their place "the form of a table" in order "more and more to
turn the simple from the old superstitious opinions of the popish Mass."
The substitute for the Catholic altars was to be "after the form of an
honest table decently covered," and was to be placed anywhere in the
chancel or choir, as was found most convenient. At St. Paul's, London,
for example, various experiments were made both as to the best position
of the table and as to how best the minister could stand at it. Four
years later Bishop White of Winchester taunted Ridley about this. "When
your table was constituted," he said, "you could never be content in
placing the same, now east, now north, now one way, now another, until
it pleased God of His goodness to place it clean out of the Church."
Beyond this the altar-stones, which by solemn rites and the unction of
Holy Oil had been consecrated to God for the Sacrifice of the Mass, and
upon which the Body and Blood of Christ had been offered daily for the
living and the dead, were not only pulled down, cast out of the church
and defaced, but were out of derision and contempt set in the floor or
the doorway that the passer-by might tread them under foot; or were
turned to other still more debased uses. To us Catholics the consecrated
altar, with its relics of the saints and the memories of its hallowed
consecration, is the most sacred thing, set apart to God's service,
together with the chalice and the paten in which and upon which the
mystery of the sacramental renewal of Christ's Passion is effected by
the words of the priest. It was this hallowed stone which was treated
with disdain and dishonour. To those who would have us think that the
whole of the changes made at the time of the Reformation were mere
protests, against what they please to call the abuse of the Mass, in the
multiplication of Masses for the living and the dead, the fact of the
contemptuous and wholesale destruction of the ancient altars and the
substitution of a moveable table, should be sufficient to show that it
was no abuse that was thought of, or aimed at, but the abolition of the
Sacrifice altogether.
But there were other indications that this abolition of the Mass and
priesthood was the set policy of the men in power at this time. A more
advanced Calvinist than even Ridley urged the party forward on the down
grade of Catholic doctrine. In 1550 John Hooper was offered the
bishopric of Gloucester, but refused it, partly because of the mention
of Saints in the New Ordinal, but mainly because of the vestments, which
he would be called upon to wear and which he regarded as aaronic
abominations. "You have got rid of the Mass," he said, "then rid
yourselves of the feathers of the Mass also." Later, however, when in
doctrinal principle Cranmer and others had advanced further in the
direction of Calvin, Hooper was consecrated according to the new Ordinal
on his own terms. The Mass was gone; the priesthood had passed away; the
altars were pulled down in the sanctuaries; the consecrated stones were
broken and dishonoured, and why should not the Vestments--Aaronic
abominations--indicative of the sacrificial character of the priest be
dispensed with also?
The time was propitious for Cranmer to take measures for the final
destruction of the old order. Since the imposition of the First Book of
Common Prayer he had had time to grow out of his previous Lutheranism
and had come under the spell of Calvin and his adherents in Geneva. The
Reformer had written to Cranmer a personal letter urging him to be more
active and hasten on the movement of Reform. The Archbishop of
Canterbury had replied begging Calvin to ply King Edward with letters
urging him to eradicate the last vestiges of the old superstition. This
was the spirit which presided at the composition of the Second Book of
Edward VI. It was issued in 1552, and before this commissions were
dispatched throughout the country to seize in the King's name all church
plate and vestments.
I have already spoken a word about this final recension of the Liturgy
of Edward VI. It is here sufficient to say that it was Calvinistic in
its conception and doctrine. In the First Prayer Book there was some
slight outward resemblance to the Mass. This was swept away, and, to use
the expression of one who lived at the time, this new liturgy "had made
a very hay of the Mass." Of the ancient _Canon_, which the Apostolic See
had possessed from the earliest ages and had kept inviolate, nothing was
allowed to survive, even as to form. Great Popes like St. Leo and St.
Gregory had inserted a few words into this inheritance of the Church
with fear and reverence. Such men would have considered it sacrilegious
and impious to alter or reject any part of it. Cranmer and his followers
felt no such scruples. They first mutilated it and altered it to their
heart's content and finally got rid of nearly every word of it
altogether. The outcome of their work may be studied in the Anglican
Book of Common Prayer to-day, where the Communion Service is
substantially that of the Book of 1552.
IV
IV
THE CHURCH BY LAW ESTABLISHED
BEARING in mind what the Catholic teaching was and is in regard to the
Supremacy of the Pope, the Holy Mass and the sacrificial character of
the priesthood, we can understand how far away from these teachings the
legislation of King Edward's reign had carried England. To our Catholic
forefathers in the beginning of the 16th Century, as to us to-day, the
Pope was the Supreme Head of the Christian Church and the foundation of
Christian unity. The Mass was the great Christian Sacrifice in which the
bread and wine were substantially changed into the very Body and Blood
of our Blessed Lord. The priest at his Ordination was given a
sacrificial character, expressed clearly in the rite, empowering him to
offer up the Eucharistic Sacrifice upon the Christian altar. In the
second quarter of the 16th Century all these points of belief were
changed by a small but determined band of English Reformers.
For a few years, on the death of Edward VI, Mary restored the old
religion; the papal supremacy and jurisdiction was again acknowledged;
the altars were once more set up; the ancient liturgy of the Mass was
read again from the old missals; priests were again ordained according
to the rite in the Catholic Pontifical, and the ordinations of those who
had received orders under the Edwardine Ordinal were rejected. I pass
over the reign of Queen Mary, which came to an end with her death in
November, 1558. I am dealing with Catholic beliefs contrasted with the
principles of the Reformation, and in this brief reign of Queen Mary the
country returned to union with Rome, and all that this implied.
Of this reign, however, I may be allowed perhaps to add the verdict of
the late Dr. James Gairdner, a non-Catholic historian, than whom no one
has a greater right to speak with authority. "History has been cruel to
her (Mary's) memory. The horrid epithet 'bloody,' bestowed so
unscrupulously alike on her and on Bonner and Gardiner and the bishops
generally, had at least a plausible justification in her case from the
severities to which she gave her sanction. . . . Among the victims, no
doubt, there were many true heroes and really honest men, but many of
them also would have been persecutors if they had had their way. Most of
them retained the belief in a Catholic Church but rejected the Mass and
held by the services authorised in Edward VI.'s reign. But of course
this meant complete rejection of an older authority--higher according to
the time-honoured theory than that of any king or Parliament--which had
never been openly set aside until that generation."
With Queen Mary's premature death religious difficulties revived. At
first it was not generally known whether her successor, Elizabeth, would
remain staunch to the old religion or favour the new, although there
were suspicions that she was inclined to the latter. She was welcomed as
sovereign by all parties, Catholic as well as Protestant, and no one now
I believe credits the silly story that she was forced into the arms of
the Reformers by the refusal of the Pope to recognise her as lawful
Queen.
Almost from the first it was easy to conjecture which way lay her
inclination. By the advice of Cecil, her chief adviser, she formed a
secret cabinet within a cabinet, which occupied itself with a project
for "the alteration of religion," as it is called in the document still
extant. Those "now in the Pope's religion" were to be got rid of, and by
process of law all were to be made to "abjure the Pope of Rome and
conform themselves to the new alterations." What these "alterations" in
the form of religion signified is not doubtful. They meant the
reintroduction of the liturgical reforms of Edward's reign, including
the abolition of the Catholic missal and Ordinal.
One of the first measures proposed to Parliament at the beginning of the
new reign was the Act of Royal Supremacy. Its object was of course to do
away with the Spiritual Supremacy of the Pope and substitute that of the
Crown, and a stringent oath admitting this was to be required of all
holding any office in the State. By this, every adherent of the old
faith was deliberately excluded from any and every position in the
Church or State.
At this time ten of the English Sees were vacant and the brunt of the
battle for the preservation of the old religion fell upon the diminished
number of Bishops in the House of Lords. Their hands were, however,
strengthened greatly by a solemn pronouncement made by the clergy in
Convocation, wherein they declared their entire belief in the Catholic,
as opposed to the Reformed teaching of the existence of the "natural
body of Christ" under the "species of bread and wine" in "the Sacrament
of the Altar, by virtue of the word of Christ, spoken by the priest."
They declared also their belief in the doctrine of Transubstantiation
and in the Sacrifice of the Mass, and at the same time affirmed "that to
Blessed Peter and to his lawful successors in the Apostolic See, as
Vicars of Christ, has been given the supreme power of feeding and ruling
the Church of Christ upon Earth and of confirming their brethren." The
English universities at this time also made the same declaration. Thus,
when change of religion and the readoption of the principles of the
Reformed Churches of Germany which had ruled in the days of Edward VI.
was in the air, the unfettered Church in England, the bishops, clergy
and the teaching bodies boldly declared for the old catholic faith of
the Holy Eucharist, the Mass and the Supremacy of the Pope.
But, the power was again in the hands of those who desired the
"alteration of religion," as it was called, and this was effected mainly
by three acts of Parliament. By the first, the tenths on Ecclesiastical
property were given over to the crown; by the second, the Supremacy of
the sovereign in matters ecclesiastical was reaffirmed; and the third,
the Act of Uniformity authorised and imposed under serious penalties the
Reformed Prayer Book of Edward VI. in place of the ancient Catholic
Missal and Pontifical. The Bishops in the House of Lords fought these
measures step by step and unanimously voted against them. With a few
unimportant modifications the new Eucharist office was that of the
second Book of Common Prayer of 1552--the Book, from which every vestige
of the mass in its essential parts had been removed. After a struggle,
in which by some means the defenders of the old religion delayed the
passage of the measure, it was passed by a majority of only three votes,
and without the support of one single spiritual peer. To a man the
Bishops of the Church opposed the Bill. The famous speeches of Bishop
Scot and of Abbot Feckenham, in which they challenged history to produce
a single instance where the bishops of any church were not consulted and
listened to in so momentous a change, were the last constitutional
efforts of the Church of England to prevent the innovations in matters
of religion being imposed by Parliament upon the consciences of those
who regarded them as heretical. The very narrow majority, which carried
this religious revolution, makes it more than likely that their
arguments had weight. There can be no reasonable doubt that had ten
episcopal sees not been vacant at this time the intentions of the
Government would have been defeated, at least for a time, and the new
Liturgy would not then have been imposed upon all by an act of
Parliament. As it was, the Elizabethan settlement of religion--as it is
called--rested obviously on the infallibility of the odd three votes of
the majority.
It was now that the "Act of Uniformity in Religion" came to be enforced.
By it the Tudor maxim _Cujus regio ejus religio_--that must be the
religion of a kingdom, which is the religion of the ruler--was carried
out in practice. The form of religion authorised by the Queen and the
Parliamentary majority was the only one allowed. The consciences of
individuals were disregarded, and just as in the days of the persecuting
pagan Emperors Christians were compelled by force to throw incense on
the altars of the pagan gods, so now with equal disregard for freedom of
conscience Catholics--those who refused to accept the Elizabethan
settlement of religion--were forced by fines, imprisonment and other
penalties, to attend the new services in their parish churches. They
became known as "Recusants" for refusing to be present at the Communion
Service of the English Prayer Book, which had again taken the place of
the Holy Mass.
Then, too, began a systematic attempt to stamp out the old religion. The
priesthood was proscribed, and priests were hunted down and exiled for
offering up the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; and, during the centuries of
persecution, which began with the reign of Queen Elizabeth, hundreds of
priests and others were put to death for the sole crime of having said
or having been present at the Mass. In the well-known phrase of one of
the present English cabinet ministers: "It was the Mass that mattered,"
and the real struggle was for this all along the line. To the Catholic,
who realised all that the Mass meant,--how it was the centre of his
religion and the sublime Christian Sacrifice, it was a point of honour
and conscience to imperil fortune and even life for so sacred a
heritage. To the Protestant in those days the Mass was a fable and
dangerous deceit, and with Luther he desired above all things to root
out this superstition from the land; and so, as there could be no Mass
without a Mass-priest, all the efforts of those in power were directed
towards extirpating all those who continued in spite of the laws to
exercise their ministry, and to prevent others coming from abroad to
continue their work, when they either perished on the scaffold, or worn
out by the long continued persecution and constant searches for them,
passed away in their hiding places. In England and in Ireland the record
of this terrible time makes us wonder how it was possible that any
remnant of the old religion could have survived.
Cecil, who was the master brain directing the policy of Queen Elizabeth,
had counted upon the gradual extinction of the old Marian priesthood and
the consequent eradication of the old Faith from the hearts of a people
left without priest or teacher or Sacraments. From 1580 the coming of
the Jesuits and seminary priests from abroad, to keep the light of the
Faith alive if possible, in spite of fines and the rack and gallows,
made it clear to the all-powerful minister that he had miscalculated the
effect of his repressive policy. From that time the persecution began in
earnest.
What contributed no doubt to increase the trials of the English and
Irish Catholics was the embarrassing excommunication pronounced by Pope
Pius V against Queen Elizabeth. It furnished the government with a
weapon they were not slow to seize upon, by making it appear to the
popular mind as if a political offence, if not a criminal treason, was
connected with the exercise of the Catholic faith. Catholics for being
Catholics were henceforth treated as traitors. For the last twenty years
of this reign, with one exception, there were numerous executions for
religion in England. Most of those who suffered thus were
priests--Mass-priests as they were called in derision of their sacerdotal
character. Thousands of men and women also were punished under the penal
laws for the exercise of the old religion. Fines and imprisonment were
the lot of those who refused at any price to accept the religious
settlement of the sovereign--to accept the form of religion which their
consciences refused. The sad records of this period show that many a
Catholic family was impoverished and destroyed by the fines levied upon
it. Gradually even great estates had to be sold to meet the demands of
penal laws against recusancy--the refusal to attend the Protestant
service. Then followed a long period of repression and ostracism. For
two centuries the unfortunate papist was shut out of the life of the
nation and subject to every insult and baseless accusation. One writer
who lived during this period says of this system: "The experience of
Elizabeth's reign had shown that the infliction of actual death roused a
life-giving enthusiasm among Catholics themselves and sympathy in the
witnesses of their sufferings. The penal system now introduced was the
preference for gagging a man, binding him hand and foot, bandaging his
eyes and imprisoning him for life, rather than killing him outright."
Everywhere throughout England and Ireland there was a stolid and heroic
resistance to the imposition of the new form of State church on the part
of those who remained true to the old religion. Looking back to those
days of darkness and despair it seems impossible to believe that any
remnant of those who would not bow their knees to Baal could survive the
system by which it was hoped to crush them. And when liberty of
conscience was at last accorded it was more in the spirit of compassion
than in any expectation that they could revive and live again that it
was given. As well might the world think that the worship of Pan or of
Jupiter would spring again into life as that the poor, despised, dying
Catholics could expand and grow once more into a position of respect and
influence, reasserting and publicly upholding the principles of the
Catholic Faith, for which their forefathers in England and Ireland had
suffered persecution and even death.