THE LUTHERAN INVASION
It is not uncommonly asserted that the religious changes in England,
although for convenience’ sake dated from the rejection of Papal
supremacy, were in reality the outcome of long-continued and
ever-increasing dissatisfaction with the then existing ecclesiastical
system. The Pope’s refusal to grant Henry his wished-for divorce
from Katherine, we are told, was a mere incident, which at most,
precipitated by a short while what had long been inevitable.[208]
Those who take this view are bound to believe that the Church in
England in the early sixteenth century was honeycombed by disbelief
in the traditional teachings, and that men were only too ready to
welcome emancipation. What then is the evidence for this picture of the
religious state of men’s minds in England on the eve of the Reformation?
It is, indeed, not improbable that up and down the country there were,
at this period, some dissatisfied spirits; some who would eagerly
seize any opportunity to free themselves from the restraints which no
longer appealed to their consciences, and from teachings they had come
to consider as mere ecclesiastical formalism. A Venetian traveller of
intelligence and observation, who visited the country at the beginning
of the century, whilst struck with the Catholic practices and with the
general manifestations of English piety he witnessed, understood that
there were “many who have various opinions concerning religion.”[209]
But so far as there is evidence at all, it points to the fact, that of
religious unrest, in any real sense, there could have been very little
in the country generally. It is, of course, impossible to suppose that
any measurable proportion of the people could have openly rejected the
teaching of the Church or have been even crypto-Lollards, without there
being satisfactory evidence of the fact forthcoming at the present day.
The similarity of the doctrines held by the English Reformers of
the sixteenth century with many of those taught by the followers of
Wycliffe has, indeed, led some writers to assume a direct connection
between them which certainly did not exist in fact. So far as England
at least is concerned, there is no justification for assuming for the
Reformation a line of descent from any form of English Lollardism. It
is impossible to study the century which preceded the overthrow of
the old religious system in England without coming to the conclusion
that as a body the Lollards had been long extinct, and that as
individuals, scattered over the length and breadth of the land,
without any practical principle of cohesion, the few who clung to the
tenets of Wycliffe were powerless to effect any change of opinion in
the overwhelming mass of the population at large. Lollardry, to the
Englishman of the day, was “heresy,” and any attempt to teach it was
firmly repressed by the ecclesiastical authority, supported by the
strong arm of the State; but it was also an offence against the common
feeling of the people, and there can be no manner of doubt that its
repression was popular. The genius of Milton enabled him to see the
fact that “Wycliffe’s preaching was soon damped and stifled by the Pope
and prelates for six or seven kings’ reigns,” and Mr. James Gairdner,
whose studies in this period of our national history enable him to
speak with authority, comes to the same conclusion. “Notwithstanding
the darkness that surrounds all subjects connected with the history of
the fifteenth century,” he writes, “we may venture pretty safely to
affirm that Lollardry was _not_ the beginning of modern Protestantism.
Plausible as it seems to regard Wycliffe as ‘the morning star of the
Reformation,’ the figure conveys an impression which is altogether
erroneous. Wycliffe’s real influence did not long survive his own day,
and so far from Lollardry having taken any deep root among the English
people, the traces of it had wholly disappeared long before the great
revolution of which it is thought to be the forerunner. At all events,
in the rich historical material for the beginning of Henry VIII.’s
reign, supplied by the correspondence of the time, we look in vain for
a single indication that any such thing as a Lollard sect existed. The
movement had died a natural death; from the time of Oldcastle it sank
into insignificance. Though still for a while considerable in point of
numbers, it no longer counted among its adherents any men of note; and
when another generation had passed away the serious action of civil war
left no place for the crotchets of fanaticism.”[210]
On the only evidence available, the student of the reign of Henry VII.
and of that of Henry VIII. up to the breach with Rome is bound to come
to the same conclusion as to the state of the English Church. If we
except manifestations of impatience with the Pope and Curia, which
could be paralleled in any age and country, and which were rather on
the secular side than on the religious, there is nothing that would
make us think that England was not fully loyal in mind and heart to
the established ecclesiastical system. In fact, as Mr. Brewer says,
everything proves that “the general body of the people had not as yet
learned to question the established doctrines of the Church. For the
most part, they paid their Peter pence and heard mass, and did as their
fathers had done before them.”[211]
It may be taken, therefore, for granted that the seeds of religious
discord were not the product of the country itself, nor, so far as we
have evidence on the subject at all, does it appear that the soil of
the country was in any way specially adapted for its fructification.
The work, both of raising the seed and of scattering it over the soil
of England, must be attributed, if the plain facts of history are to be
believed, to Germans and the handful of English followers of the German
Reformers. If we would rightly understand the religious situation in
England at the commencement of the Reformation, it is of importance to
inquire into the methods of attack adopted in the Lutheran invasion,
and to note the chief doctrinal points which were first assailed.
Very shortly after the religious revolt had established itself in
Germany, the first indications of a serious attempt to undermine the
traditional faith of the English Church became manifest in England.
Roger Edgworth, a preacher during the reigns of Henry and Queen Mary,
says that his “long labours have been cast in most troublesome times
and most encumbered with errors and heresies, change of minds and
schisms that ever was in the realm.… Whilst I was a young student in
divinity,” he continues, “Luther’s heresies rose and were scattered
here in this realm, which, in less space than a man would think, had
so sore infected the Christian folk, first the youth and then the
elders, where the children could set their fathers to school, that the
king’s Majesty and all Christian clerks in the realm had much ado to
extinguish them. This they could not so perfectly quench, but that ever
since, when they might have any maintenance by man or woman of great
power, they burst forth afresh, even like fire hid under chaff.”[212]
Sir Thomas More, when Chancellor in 1532, attributed the rapid spread
of what to him and most people of his day in England was heresy, to
the flood of literature which was poured forth over the country by
the help of printing. “We have had,” he writes, “some years of late,
plenteous of evil books. For they have grown up so fast and sprung up
so thick, full of pestilent errors and pernicious heresies, that they
have infected and killed, I fear me, more simple souls than the famine
of the dear years have destroyed bodies.”[213]
We are not left in ignorance as to the books here referred to, as some
few years previously the bishops of England had issued a list of the
prohibited volumes. Thus, in October 1526, Bishop Tunstall ordered that
in London people should be warned not to read the works in question,
but that all who possessed them should deliver them over to the
bishop’s officials in order that they might be destroyed as pernicious
literature. The list included several works of Luther, three or four of
Tyndale, a couple of Zwingle, and several isolated works, such as the
_Supplication of Beggars_, and the _Dyalogue between the Father and the
Son_.[214]
In 1530 the king by proclamation forbade the reading or possession of
some eighty-five works of Wycliffe, Luther, Œcolampadius, Zwingle,
Pomeranus, Bucer, Wesselius, and indeed the German divines generally,
under the heading of “books of the Lutheran sect or faction conveyed
into the city of London.” Besides these Latin treatises, the
prohibition included many English tracts, such as _A book of the old
God and the new_, the _Burying of the Mass_, Frith’s _Disputation
concerning Purgatory_, and several prayer-books intended to propagate
the new doctrines, such as _Godly prayers_; _Matins and Evensong with
the seven Psalms and other heavenly psalms with commendations_; the
_Hortulus Animæ_ in English,[215] and the _Primer_ in English.
In his proclamation Henry VIII. speaks of the determination of the
English nation in times past to be true to the Catholic faith and to
defend the country against “wicked sects of heretics and Lollards,
who, by perversion of Holy Scripture, do induce erroneous opinions,
sow sedition amongst Christian people, and disturb the peace and
tranquillity of Christian realms, as lately happened in some parts of
Germany, where, by the procurement and sedition of Martin Luther and
other heretics, were slain an infinite number of Christian people.”
To prevent like misfortunes happening in England, he orders prompt
measures to be taken to put a stop to the circulation of books in
English and other languages, which teach things “intolerable to the
clean ears of any good Christian man.”[216]
By the king’s command, the convocation of Canterbury drew up a list
of prohibited heretical books. In the first catalogue of fifty-three
tracts and volumes, there is no mention of any work of Wycliffe, and
besides some volumes which had come from the pens of Tyndale, Frith,
and Roy, who were acknowledged disciples of Luther, the rest are all
the compositions of the German Reformers. The same may be said of a
supplementary list of tracts, the authors of which were unknown. All
these are condemned as containing false teaching, plainly contrary to
the Catholic faith, and the bishops add: “Moreover, following closely
in the footsteps of our fathers, we prohibit all from selling, giving,
reading, distributing, or publishing any tract, booklet, pamphlet,
or book, which translates or interprets the Holy Scripture in the
vernacular … or even knowingly to keep such volumes without the licence
of their diocesan in writing.”[217]
About the same time a committee of bishops, including Archbishop
Warham and Bishop Tunstall was appointed to draw up a list of some
of the principal errors contained in the prohibited works of English
heretics beyond the sea. The king had heard that “many books in the
English tongue containing many detestable errors and damnable opinions,
printed in parts beyond the sea,” were being brought into England and
spread abroad. He was unwilling that “such evil seed sown amongst his
people (should) so take root that it might overgrow the corn of the
Catholic doctrine before sprung up in the souls of his subjects,” and
he consequently ordered this examination. This has been done and the
errors noted, “albeit many more there be in those books; which books
totally do swarm full of heresies and detestable opinions.” The books
thus examined and noted were eight in number: _The Wicked Mammon_;
the _Obedience of Christian man_; the _Revelation of Antichrist_;
the _Sum of Scripture_; the _Book of Beggars_; the _Kalendar of the
Prymer_; the _Prymer_, and an _Exposition unto the Seventh Chapter
of I Corinthians_. From these some hundreds of propositions were
culled which contradicted the plain teaching of the Church in matters
of faith and morality. In this condemnation, as the king states in
his directions to preachers to publish the same, the commission were
unanimous.[218]
The attack on the traditional teachings of the Church, moreover,
was not confined to unimportant points. From the first, high and
fundamental doctrines, as it seemed to men in those days, were put
in peril. The works sent forth by the advocates of the change speak
for themselves, and, when contrasted with those of Luther, leave no
room for doubt that they were founded on them, and inspired by the
spirit of the leader of the revolt, although, as was inevitable in
such circumstances, in particulars the disciples proved themselves in
advance of their master. Writing in 1546, Dr. Richard Smythe contrasts
the old times, when the faith was respected, with the then state of
mental unrest in religious matters. “In our days,” he writes, “not a
few things, nor of small importance, but (alack the more is the pity)
even the chiefest and most weighty matters of our religion and faith
are called in question, babbled, talked, and jangled upon (reasoned
I cannot nor ought not to call it). These matters in time past (when
reason had place and virtue with learning was duly regarded, yea, and
vice with insolency was generally detested and abhorred) were held in
such reverence and honour, in such esteem and dignity, yea, so received
and embraced by all estates, that it was not in any wise sufferable
that tag and rag, learned and unlearned, old and young, wise and
foolish, boys and wenches, master and man, tinkers and tilers, colliers
and coblers, with other such raskabilia might at their pleasure rail
and jest (for what is it else they now do?) against everything that
is good and virtuous, against all things that are expedient and
profitable, not sparing any Sacrament of the Church or ordinance of the
same, no matter how laudable, decent, or fitting it has been regarded
in times past, or how much it be now accepted by good and Catholic
men. In this way, both by preaching and teaching (if it so ought to
be called), playing, writing, printing, singing, and (Oh, good Lord!)
in how many other ways besides, divers of our age, being their own
schoolmasters, or rather scholars of the devil, have not forborne or
feared to speak and write against the most excellent and most blessed
Sacrament of the Altar, affirming that the said Sacrament is nothing
more than a bare figure, and that there is not in the same Sacrament
the very body and blood of our blessed Saviour and Redeemer, Jesus
Christ, but only a naked sign, a token, a memorial and a remembrance
only of the same, if they take it for so much even and do not call it
(as they are wont to do) an idol and very plain idolatry.”[219]
As to the date of the introduction of these heretical views into
England, Sir Thomas More entirely agreed with Dr. Smythe, the writer
just quoted. He places the growth of these ideas in the circulation
of books by Tyndale, Frith, and Barnes, and even as late as 1533,
declares that the number of those who had accepted the new teaching
was grossly exaggerated. He states his belief that “the realm is not
full of heretics, and it has in it but a few, though that few be indeed
over many and grown more also by negligence in some part than there
has been in some late years past.”[220] It was, indeed, part of the
strategy pursued by the innovators in religion to endeavour to make
the movement appear more important than it had any claim to be. It
is, writes More, the “policy” of “these heretics who call themselves
‘evangelical brethren,’” to make their number appear larger than it is.
“Some pot-headed apostles they have that wander about the realm into
sundry shires, for whom every one has a different name in every shire,
and some, peradventure, in corners here and there they bring into the
brotherhood. But whether they get any or none they do not hesitate to
lie when they come home, and say that more than half of every shire is
of their own sect. Boast and brag these blessed brethren never so fast,
they feel full well themselves that they be too feeble in what country
so ever they be strongest. For if they thought themselves able to meet
and match the Catholics they would not, I ween, lie still at rest for
three days.”
“For in all places where heresies have sprung up hitherto so hath it
proved yet. And so negligently might these things be handled, that at
length it might happen so here. And verily they look (far as they be
yet from the power) for it, and some of them have not hesitated to say
this, and some to write it, too. For I read the letter myself which was
cast into the palace of the Right Reverend Father in God, Cuthbert,
now Bishop of Durham, but then Bishop of London, in which among other
bragging word … were these words contained: ‘There will once come a
day.’ And out of question that day they long for but also daily look
for, and would, if they were not too weak, not fail to find it. And
they have the greater hope because … they see that it begins to grow
into a custom that among good Catholic folk they are suffered to talk
unchecked.” For good men in their own minds indeed think the Catholic
faith so strong that heretics with all their babbling will never be
able to vanquish it, “and in this undoubtedly their mind is not only
good, but also very true. But they do not look far enough. For as the
sea will never surround and overwhelm all the land, and yet has eaten
it in many places, and swallowed whole countries up and made many
places sea, which sometime were well-inhabited lands, and has lost part
of its own possession again in other places, so, though the faith of
Christ shall never be overwhelmed with heresy, nor the gate of hell
prevail against Christ’s Church, yet as in some places it winneth in
new peoples, so by negligence in some places the old may be lost.”[221]
Sir Thomas More is all for vigilance on the part of the authorities. He
likens those who are in power and office to the guardians of a fertile
field who are bound to prevent the sowing of tares on their master’s
land; and the multiplication of evil books and their circulation
among the people, cannot, in his opinion, have any other effect than
to prevent the fertilisation of the good seed of God’s word in the
hearts of many. “These new teachers,” he says, “despise Christ’s
Sacraments, which are His holy ordinances and a great part of Christ’s
New Law and Testament. Who can place less value on His commandments
than they who, upon the boldness of faith only, set all good works at
naught, and little consider the danger of their evil deeds upon the
boldness that a bare faith and slight repentance, without shrift or
penance, suffices, and that no vow made to God can bind a man to live
chastely or hinder a monk from marriage. All these things, with many
pestilent errors besides, these abominable books of Tyndale and his
fellows teach us. Of these books of heresies there are so many made
within these few years, what by Luther himself and by his fellows, and
afterwards by the new sects sprung out of his, which, like the children
of Vippara, would now gnaw out their mother’s belly, that the bare
names of those books were almost enough to make a book. Some of every
sort of those books are brought into this realm and kept in ‘hucker
mucker’ by some shrewd masters who keep them for no good. Besides
the Latin, French, and German books of which these evil sects have
put forth an innumerable number, there are some made in the English
tongue. First, Tyndale’s _English Testament_, father of them all by
reason of his false translating, and after that, the _Five Books of
Moses_ translated by the same man; we need not doubt in what manner
and for what purpose. Then you have his _Introduction to Saint Paul’s
Epistle_, with which he introduces his readers to a false understanding
of Saint Paul, making them believe, among many other heresies, that
Saint Paul held that faith only was always sufficient for salvation,
and that men’s good works were worth nothing and could not deserve
thanks or reward in heaven, although they were done in grace.… Then we
have from Tyndale _The Wicked Mammona_, by which many a man has been
beguiled and brought into many wicked heresies, which in good faith
would be to me a matter of no little wonder, for there was never a more
foolish frantic book, were it not that the devil is ever ready to put
out the eyes of those who are content to become blind. Then we have
Tyndale’s _Book of Obedience_, by which we are taught to disobey the
teaching of Christ’s Catholic Church and set His holy Sacraments at
naught. Then we have from Tyndale the _First Epistle of Saint John_,
expounded in such wise that I dare say that blessed Apostle had rather
his Epistle had never been put in writing than that his holy words
should be believed by all Christian people in such a sense. Then we
have the _Supplication of Beggars_, a piteous beggarly book, in which
he would have all the souls in Purgatory beg all about for nothing.
Then we have from George Joye, otherwise called Clarke, a _Goodly Godly
Epistle_, wherein he teaches divers other heresies, but specially that
men’s vows and promises of chastity are not lawful, and can bind no man
in conscience not to wed when he will. And this man, considering that
when a man teaches one thing and does another himself, the people set
less value by his preaching, determined therefore with himself, that
he would show himself an example of his preaching. Therefore, being a
priest, he has beguiled a woman and wedded her; the poor woman, I ween,
being unaware that he is a priest. Then you have also an _Exposition
on the Seventh Chapter of Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians_,
by which exposition also priests, friars, monks, and nuns are taught
the evangelical liberty that they may run out a-caterwauling and wed.
That work has no name of the maker, but some think it was Friar Roy
who, when he had fallen into heresy, then found it unlawful to live
in chastity and ran out of his Order. Then have we the _Examinations
of Thorpe_ put forth as it is said by George Constantine (by whom I
know well there has been a great many books of that sort sent into
this realm). In that book, the heretic that made it as (if it were) a
communication between the bishop and his chaplains and himself, makes
all the parties speak as he himself likes, and sets down nothing as
spoken against his heresies, but what he himself would seem solemnly
to answer. When any good Christian man who has either learning or any
natural wit reads this book, he shall be able not only to perceive
him for a foolish heretic and his arguments easy to answer, but shall
also see that he shows himself a false liar in his rehearsal of the
matter in which he makes the other part sometimes speak for his own
convenience such manner of things as no man who was not a very wild
goose would have done.
“Then have we _Jonas_ made out by Tyndale, a book that whosoever
delight therein shall stand in such peril, that Jonas was never so
swallowed up by the whale, as by the delight of that book a man’s soul
may be so swallowed by the devil that he shall never have the grace to
get out again. Then, we have from Tyndale the answer to my _Dyalogue_.
Then, the book of Frith against _Purgatory_. Then, the book of Luther
translated into English in the name of Brightwell, but, as I am
informed, it was translated by Frith; a book, such as Tyndale never
made one more foolish nor one more full of lies.… Then, we have the
_Practice of Prelates_, wherein Tyndale intended to have made a special
show of his high worldly wit, so that men should have seen therein that
there was nothing done among princes that he was not fully advertised
of the secrets. Then, we have now the book of Friar Barnes, sometime a
doctor of Cambridge, who was abjured before this time for heresy, and
is at this day come under a safe conduct to the realm. Surely, of all
their books that yet came abroad in English (of all which there was
never one wise nor good) there was none so bad, so foolish, so false
as his. This, since his coming, has been plainly proved to his face,
and that in such wise that, when the books that he cites and alleges
in his book were brought forth before him, and his ignorance showed
him, he himself did in divers things confess his oversight, and clearly
acknowledged that he had been mistaken and wrongly understood the
passages.
“Then, we have besides Barnes’s book, the _A B C for children_. And
because there is no grace therein, lest we should lack prayers, we
have the _Primer_ and the _Ploughman’s Prayer_ and a book of other
small devotions, and then the whole _Psalter_ too. After the _Psalter_,
children were wont to go straight to their _Donat_ and their Accidence,
but now they go straight to Scripture. And for this end we have as a
Donat, the book of the _Pathway to Scripture_, and for an Accidence,
the _Whole sum of Scripture_ in a little book, so that after these
books are learned well, we are ready for Tyndale’s _Pentateuchs_ and
Tyndale’s _Testament_, and all the other high heresies that he and
Joye and Frith and Friar Barnes teach in all their books. Of all these
heresies the seed is sown, and prettily sprung up in these little
books before. For the _Primer_ and _Psalter_, prayers and all, were
translated and made in this manner by heretics only. The _Psalter_ was
translated by George Joye, the priest that is wedded now, and I hear
say the _Primer_ too, in which the seven Psalms are printed without
the Litany, lest folks should pray to the saints; and the _Dirge_ is
left out altogether, lest a man might happen to pray with it for his
father’s soul. In their Calendar, before their devout prayers, they
have given us a new saint, Sir Thomas Hytton, the heretic who was
burned in Kent. They have put him in on St. Matthew’s Eve, by the name
of St. Thomas the Martyr.
“It would be a long work to rehearse all their books, for there are
yet more than I have known. Against all these the king’s high wisdom
politically provided, in that his proclamation forbade any manner of
English books printed beyond the sea to be brought into this realm, or
any printed within this realm to be sold unless the name of the printer
and his dwelling-place were set upon the book. But still, as I said
before, a few malicious, mischievous persons have now brought into this
realm these ungracious books full of pestilent, poisoned heresies that
have already in other realms killed, by schisms and war, many thousand
bodies, and by sinful errors and abominable heresies many more thousand
souls.
“Although these books cannot either be there printed without great
cost, nor here sold without great adventure and peril, yet, with money
sent hence, they cease not to print them there, and send them hither by
the whole sacks full at once; and in some places, looking for no lucre,
cast them abroad at night, so great a pestilent pleasure have some
devilish people caught with the labour, travail, cast, charge, peril,
harm, and hurt of themselves to seek the destruction of others.”[222]
In his introduction to the _Confutation_ of Tyndale’s answer, from
which the foregoing extracts are taken, Sir Thomas More gives ample
evidence that the teaching of “the New Learning” was founded entirely
upon that of the German Reformer Luther, although on certain points his
English followers had gone beyond their master. He takes for example
what Hytton, “whom Tyndale has canonized,” had been teaching “his holy
congregations, in divers corners and luskes lanes.” Baptism, he had
allowed to be “a sacrament necessary for salvation,” though he declared
that there was no need for a priest to administer it. Matrimony, he
thought a good thing for Christians, but would be sorry to say it was
a sacrament. Extreme Unction and Confirmation, together with Holy
Orders, he altogether rejected as sacraments, declaring them to be
mere ceremonies of man’s invention. “The mass,” he declared, “should
never be said,” since to do so was rather an act of sin than virtue.
Confession to a priest was unnecessary, and the penance enjoined was
“without profit to the soul.” Purgatory he denied, “and said further,
that neither prayer nor fasting for the souls departed can do them
any good.” Religious vows were wrong, and those who entered religion
“sinned in so doing.” He held further, that “no man had any free-will
after he had once sinned;” that “all the images of Christ and His
saints should be thrown out of the Church,” and that whatsoever laws
“the Pope or a General Council might make beyond what is expressly
commanded in Scripture” need not be obeyed. “As touching the Sacrament
of the Altar, he said that it was a necessary sacrament, but held that
after the consecration, there was nothing whatever therein, but only
the very substance of material bread and wine.”[223]
Now, it was to defend these points of Catholic faith, as More, in
common with the most learned in the land, believed them to be, that he
took up his pen against Tyndale and others. I wish, he says, to second
“the king’s gracious purpose, as being his most unworthy chancellor,”
since “I know well that the king’s highness, for his faithful mind to
God, desires nothing more effectually than the maintenance of the true
Catholic faith, whereof is his no more honourable than well-deserved
title, ‘defensor.’ He detests nothing more than these pestilent books
which Tyndale and others send over into the realm in order to set
forth their abominable heresies. For this purpose he has not only by
his most erudite famous books, both in English and Latin, declared his
most Catholic purpose and intent, but also by his open proclamations
divers times renewed, and finally in his own most royal person in the
Star Chamber most eloquently by his mouth, in the presence of his
lords spiritual and temporal, has given monition and warning to all
the justices of peace of every quarter of his realm then assembled
before his Highness, to be declared by them to all his people, and did
prohibit and forbid under great penalties, the bringing in, reading,
and keep of those pernicious poisoned books.”[224]
The other writers of the time, moreover, had no doubt whatever as to
the place whence the novel opinions had sprung, and they feared that
social disturbances would follow in the wake of the religious teaching
of the sectaries as they had done in the country of their birth. Thus
Germen Gardynare, writing to a friend about the execution of John Frith
for heresy, says that he was “amongst others found busy at Oxford
in setting abroad these heresies which lately sprang up in Germany,
and by the help of such folk are spread abroad into sundry places of
Christendom, tending to nothing else but to the division and rending
asunder of Christ’s mystical body, His Church; and to the pulling down
of all power and the utter subversion of all commonwealths.”[225]
Sir Thomas More, too, saw danger to the ship of State from the storms
which threatened the nation in the rise of the religious novelties
imported from abroad. As a warning anticipation of what might come to
pass in England if the flood was allowed to gain head, he describes
what was known of the state of Germany when he wrote in 1528. What
helped Luther to successfully spread his poison was, he says, “that
liberty which he so highly commended unto the people, inducing them
to believe that having faith they needed nothing else. For he taught
them to neglect fasting, prayer, and such other things as vain and
unfruitful ceremonies, teaching them also that being faithful
Christians they were so near cousins to Christ that they were, in a
full freedom and liberty, discharged of all governors and all manner of
laws spiritual and temporal, except only the Gospel. And though he said
that, as a point of special perfection, it would be good to suffer and
bear the rule and authority of Popes and princes and other governors,
whose rule and authority he calls mere tyranny, yet he says the people
are so free by faith that they are no more bound thereto than they are
to suffer wrong. And this doctrine Tyndale also teaches as the special
matter of his holy book of disobedience. Now, this doctrine was heard
so pleasantly in Germany by the common people that it blinded them in
looking on the remnant, and would not allow them to consider and see
what end the same would come to. The temporal lords also were glad to
hear this talk against the clergy, and the people were as glad to hear
it against the clergy and against the lords too, and against all the
governors of every good town and city. Finally, it went so far that it
began to burst out and fall to open force and violence. For intending
to begin at the most feeble, a boisterous company of the unhappy sect
gathered together and first rebelled against an abbot, and afterwards
against a bishop, wherewith the temporal lords had good game and sport
and dissembled the matter, gaping after the lands of the spirituality,
till they had almost played as Æsop tells of the dog, which, in order
to snatch at the shadow of the cheese in the water, let the cheese
he had in his mouth fall, and lost it. For so it was shortly after
that those uplandish Lutherans took so great boldness and began to
grow so strong that they set also upon the temporal lords. These … so
acquitted themselves that they slew in one summer 70,000 Lutherans
and subdued the rest in that part of Germany to a most miserable
servitude.… And in divers other parts of Germany and Switzerland this
ungracious sect is so grown, by the negligence of governors in great
cities, that in the end the common people have compelled the rulers to
follow them.…
“And now it is too piteous a sight to see the ‘dispiteous dispyghts’
done in many places to God and all good men, with the marvellous
change from the face and fashion of Christendom into a very tyrannous
persecution, not only of all good Christians living and dead, but
also of Christ Himself. For there you will see now goodly monasteries
destroyed, the places burnt up, and the religious people put out
and sent to seek their living; or, in many cities, the places (the
buildings) yet standing with more despite to God than if they were
burned to ashes. For the religious people, monks, friars, and nuns,
are wholly driven or drawn out, except such as would agree to forsake
their vows of chastity and be wedded; and places dedicated to
cleanliness and chastity, left only to these apostates as brothels to
live there in lechery. Now are the parish churches in many places not
only defaced, all the ornaments taken away, the holy images pulled
down, and either broken or burned, but also the Holy Sacrament cast
out. And the abominable beasts (which I abhor to think about) did
not abhor in despite to defile the pixes and in many places use the
churches continually for a common siege. And that they have done in
so despiteful a wise that when a stranger from other places where
Christ is worshipped resorts to these cities, some of those unhappy
wretched citizens do not fail, as it were, for courtesy and kindness,
to accompany them in their walking abroad to show them the pleasures
and commodities of the town, and then bring them to the church, only
to show them in derision what uses the churches serve for!” Then,
after pointing out that “of this sect were the greater part of those
ungracious people who lately entered into Rome with the Duke of
Bourbon,” Sir Thomas More details at considerable length the horrors
committed during that sack of the Eternal City; adding: “For this
purpose I rehearse to you these their heavy mischievous dealings, that
you may perceive by their deeds what good comes of their sect. For as
our Saviour says: ‘ye shall know the tree by the fruit.’”[226]
The activity of the teachers of the new doctrine was everywhere
remarkable. More only wished that the maintainers of the traditional
Catholic faith were half so zealous “as those that are fallen into
false heresies and have forsaken the faith.” These seem, he says,
indeed to “have a hot fire of hell in their hearts that can never
suffer them to rest or cease, but forces them night and day to labour
and work busily to subvert and destroy the Catholic Christian faith
by every means they can devise.”[227] The time was, “and even until
now very late,” when no man would allow any heresy to be spoken at
his table; for this “has been till of late the common Christian zeal
towards the Catholic faith.” But now (1533) “though, God be thanked,
the faith is itself as fast rooted in this realm as ever it was before
(except in some very few places, and yet even in those few the very
faithful folk are many more than the faithless), even good men are
beginning to tolerate the discussion of heretical views, and to take
part in ‘the evil talk.’”
To understand the Reformation in England, it is important to note
the progress of its growth, and to note that the lines upon which
it developed were to all intents and purposes those which had been
laid down by Luther for the German religious revolution, although, in
many ways, England was carried along the path of reformed doctrines,
even further than the original leader had been prepared to go. The
special points of the traditional faith of the English people, which
the reforming party successfully attacked, were precisely those
which had been the battle-ground in Germany, and Sir Thomas More’s
description of the result there might somewhat later have been written
of this country. Tyndale was described by More as “the captain of the
English heretics,” and the influence of his works no doubt greatly
helped to the overthrow of the traditional teaching. The key of the
position taken up by the English Reformers, as well as by their German
predecessors, was the claim that all belief must be determined by
the plain word of Holy Scripture, and by that alone. Tradition they
rejected, although Sir Thomas More pointed out forcibly that the
Church had always acknowledged the twofold authority of the written
and unwritten word.[228] Upon this ground Tyndale and his successors
rejected all the sacraments but two, attacked popular devotion to
sacred images and prayers to our Lady and the saints, and rejected
the old teaching about Purgatory and the help the souls of the
departed faithful could derive from the suffrages and penances of
the living. Confirmation and the anointing of priests at ordination
they contemptuously called “butter smearing,” and with their denial
of the priesthood quickly came their rejection of the doctrine of the
Sacrifice in the Mass, and their teaching that the Holy Eucharist is a
“token and sign” rather than the actual Body and Blood of our Lord.
No means were left untried to further the spread of the new views.
Books of prayer were drawn up, in which, under the guise of familiar
devotions, the poison of the reformed doctrine was unsuspectedly
imbibed. Richard Whitford complains that his works, which just on the
eve of the Reformation were deservedly popular, had been made use of
for the purpose of interpolating tracts against points of Catholic
faith, which people were induced to buy under the supposition that they
were from the pen of the celebrated monk of Sion. John Waylande, the
printer of some Whitford books, in 1537 prefixed the following notice
to the new edition of the _Werke for Householders_. “The said author
required me instantly that I should not print nor join any other works
with his, specially of uncertain authors. For of late he found a work
joined in the same volume with his works, and bought and taken for his
work. This was not his, but was put there instead of his work that
before was named among the contents of his book, and yet his (real)
work was left out, as is complained in this preface here unto the
Reader.”
In his preface Whitford says that the substituted work was obviously by
one of the Reformers, and “not only puts me into infamy and slander,
but also puts all readers in jeopardy of conscience to be infected (by
heresy) and in danger of the king’s laws, for the manifold erroneous
opinions that are contained in the same book.” He consequently adds a
warning to his readers: “By my poor advice,” he says, “read not those
books that go forth without named authors. For, doubtless, many of them
that seem very devout and good works, are full of heresies, and your
old English poet says, ‘There is no poison so perilous of sharpness as
that is that hath of sugar a sweetness.’”[229]
In a subsequent volume, published in 1541, called _Dyvers holy
instructions and teachings_, Whitford again complains of this device of
the teachers of the new doctrines. In the preface he gives the exact
titles of the four little tracts which go to make up the volume, in
order, as he says, “to give you warning to search well and surely that
no other works are put amongst them that might deceive you. For, of a
certainty, I found now but very lately a work joined and bound with my
poor labours and under the contents of the same volume, and one of my
works which was named in the same contents left out. Instead of this,
was put this other work that was not mine. For the title of mine was
this, ‘A daily exercise and experience of death,’ and the other work
has no name of any author. And all such works in this time are ever to
be suspected, for so the heretics are used to send forth their poison
among the people covered with sugar. For they seem to be good and
devout workers, and are in very deed stark heresies.”[230]
Even the smallest points were not deemed too insignificant for the
teaching of novel doctrines destructive of the old Catholic spirit.
To take an example: John Standish, writing in Mary’s reign about the
vernacular Scripture, complains of the translation which had been made
in the time of Henry VIII. “Who is able,” he writes, “to tell at
first sight how many hundred faults are even in their best translation
(if there is any good). Shall they be suffered still to continue? Shall
they still poison more like as they do in a thousand damnable English
books set forth within the last twenty-two years? Lord deliver us from
them all, and that with all speed! I take God to record (if I may
speak only of one fault in the translation and touch no more) my heart
did ever abhor to hear this word _Dominus_ … translated _the_ Lord,
whereas it ought to be translated _our_ Lord, the very Latin phrase
so declaring. Is not St. John saying to Peter (John, xxi.), _Dominus
est_, ‘it is our Lord’? whereas they have falsely translated it as in
many other places ‘_the_ Lord.’ And likewise in the salutation of our
Lady, ‘Hail, Mary, full of grace, _dominus tecum_,’ does not this word
_dominus_ here include _noster_, and so ought to be translated ‘our
Lord is with thee’? Would you make the Archangel like a devil call him
_the_ Lord? He is the Lord to every evil spirit, but to us He is our
most merciful Lord and ought to be called so. If, perchance, you ask of
a husbandman whose ground that is, he will answer, ‘the lord’s,’ who is
perhaps no better than a collier. Well, I speak this, not now so much
for the translation, seeing that it swarms as full of faults as leaves
(I will not say lines) as I do, because I wish that the common speech
among people sprung from this fond translation, ‘I thank the Lord’;
‘the Lord be praised’; ‘the Lord knoweth’; with all such-like phrases
might be given up, and that the people might be taught to call Him ‘our
Lord,’ saying, ‘I thank our Lord’; ‘our Lord be praised,’[231] &c., &c.”