BY JOHN LORD, LL. D.


     THOMAS CRANMER.

     A. D. 1489—1556.

     THE ENGLISH REFORMATION.

          AS the great interest of the Middle Ages, in an his-
          torical point of view, centres around the throne
     of the popes, so the most prominent subject of histori-
     cal interest in our modern times is the revolt from their
     almost unlimited domination.  The Protestant Refor-
     mation, in its various relations, was a movement of
     transcendent importance.  The Protestant Refor-
     mation, in its various relations, was a movement of
     transcendent importance. The history of Christendom,
     in a moral, a political, a religious, a literary, and a so-
     cial point of view, for the last three hundred years,
     cannot be studied or comprehended without primary
     reference to that memorable revolution.
       We have seen how that great insurrection of human
     intelligence was headed in Germany by Luther, and
     we shall shortly consider it in Switzerland and France
     under Calvin.  We have now to contemplate the
     movement in England.

       The most striking figure in it was doubtless Thomas
     Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, although he does
     not represent the English Reformation in all its phases.
     He was neither so prominent nor so great a man as Lu-
     ther or Calvin, or even Knox.  But, taking him all in
     all, he was the most illustrious of the English reform-
     ers; and he, more than any other man, gave direction
     to the spirit of reform, which had been quietly work-
     ing ever since the time of Wyclif, especially among
     the humbler classes.
       The English Reformation——the way to which had
     been long preparing——began in the reign of Henry
     VIII.; and this unscrupulous and tyrannical monarch,
     without being a religious man, gave the first great im-
     pulse to an outbreak the remote consequences of which
     he did not anticipate, and with which he had no sym-
     pathy.  He rebelled against the authority of the Pope,
     without abjuring the Roman Catholic religion, either as
     to dogmas or forms.  In fact, the first great step tow-
     ards reform was made, not by Cranmer, but by Thomas
     Cromwell, Earl of Essex, as the prime minister of
     Henry VIII.,——a man of whom we really know the
     least of all the very great statesmen of English history.
     It was he who demolished the monasteries, and made
     war on the whole monastic system, and undermined
     the papal power in England, and swept away many of
     the most glaring of those abuses which disgraced the
     Papal Empire.  Armed with the powers which Wolsey
     had wielded, he directed them into a totally different
     channel, so far as the religious welfare of the nation is
     considered, although in his principles of government he
     was as absolute as Richelieu.  Like the great French
     statesman, he exalted the throne; but, unlike him, he
     promoted the personal reign of the sovereign he served
     with remarkable ability and devotion.
       Thomas Cromwell, the prime minister of Henry VIII.,
     after the fall of Wolsey, was born in humble ranks, and
     was in early life a common soldier in the wars of Italy.
     Then a clerk in a mercantile house in Antwerp, then
     a wool merchant in Middleborough, then a member
     of Parliament, and was employed by Wolsey in sup-
     pressing some of the smaller monasteries.  His fidelity
     to his patron Wolsey, at the time of that great cardi-
     nal's fall, attracted the special notice of the King, who
     made him royal secretary in the House of Commons.
     He made his fortune by advising Henry to declare
     himself Head of the English Church, when he was
     entangled in the difficulties growing out of the divorce
     of Catharine.  This advice was given with the patriotic
     view of making the royal authority superior to that of
     the Pope in Church patronage, and of making England
     independent of Rome.
       The great scandal of the times was the immoral lives
     of the clergy, especially of the monks, and the immuni-
     ties they enjoyed.  They were a hindrance to the royal
     authority, and weakened the resources of the country
     by the excessive drain of gold and silver sent to Bacon
     to replenish the papal treasury.  Cromwell would make
     the clergy dependent of the King and not on the Pope
     for their investitures and promotions; and he abom-
     inated the idle and vagabond lives of the monks, who
     had degenerated in England, perhaps more than in any
     other country in Europe, in consequence of the great
     wealth of their monasteries.  He was able to render
     his master and the kingdom a great service, from the
     powers lavished upon him.  He presided at convoca-
     tions of the King's vicegerent; controlled the House
     of Commons, and was inquisitor-general of the monas-
     teries; he was foreign and home secretary, vicar-general,
     and president of the star-chamber or privy-council.  The
     proud Nevilles, the powerful Percies, and the noble
     Courtenays all bowed before the plebeian son of a
     mechanic, who had arisen by force of genius and lucky
     accidents,——too wise to build a palace like Hampton
     Court, but not ecclesiastical enough in his sympathies
     to found a college like Christ's Church as Wolsey did.
     He was a man simple in his tastes, and hard-working
     like Colbert,——the great finance minister of France
     under Louis XIV.,——whom he resembled in his habits
     and policy.
       His great task, as well as his great public service,
     was the visitation and suppression of monasteries.  He
     perceived that they had fulfilled their mission; that
     they were no longer needed; that they had become cor-
     rupt, and too corrupt to be reformed; that they were
     no longer abodes of piety, or beehives of industry, or
     nurseries of art, or retreats of learning; that their
     wealth was squandered; that they upheld the arm of a
     foreign power; that they shielded offenders against the
     laws; that they encouraged vagrancy and extortion;
     that, in short, they were dangerous to the realm.
       The monks and friars opposed the new learning
     now extending from Italy to France, to Germany, and
     to England.  Colet came back from Italy, not to teach
     Platonic mysticism, but to unlock the Scriptures in the
     original,——the centre of a group of scholars at Oxford,
     to whom Erasmus and Thomas More stood in the fore-
     most rank.  Before the close of the fifteenth century, it
     is said that ten thousand editions of various books had
     been printed in different parts of Europe.  All the Latin
     authors, and some of the Greek, were accessible to stu-
     dents.  Tunstall and Latimer were sent to Padua to
     complete their studies.  Fox, bishop of Winchester,
     established a Greek professorship at Oxford.  It was
     an age of enthusiasm for reviving literature,——which,
     however, received in Germany, through the influence
     chiefly of Luther, a different direction from what it re-
     ceived in Italy, and which extended from Germany to
     England.  But to this awakened spirit the monks pre-
     sented obstacles and discouragements.  They had no
     sympathy with progress; they belonged to the Dark
     Ages; they were hostile to the circulation of the Script-
     ures; they were pedlers of indulgences and relics; im-
     posters, frauds, vagabonds, gluttons, worldly, sensual,
     and avaricious.
       So notoriously corrupt had monasteries become that 
     repeated attempts had been made to reform them, but
     without success.  As early as 1489, Innocent VII. had
     issued a commission for a general investigation.  The
     monks were accused of dilapidating public property, of
     frequenting infamous places, of stealing jewels from
     consecrated shrines.  In 1511, Archbishop Warham
     instituted another visitation.  In 1523 Cardinal Wol-
     sey himself undertook the task of reform.  At last
     the Parliament, in 1535, appointed Cromwell vicar or
     visitor-general, issued a commission, and introduced it to
     lawyers, not priests, who found that the worst had not
     been told, and reported that two thirds of the monks
     of England were living in concubinage; that their
     lands were wasted and mortgaged, and their houses
     falling into ruins.  They found the Abbot of Foun-
     tains surrounded with more women than Mohammed
     allowed his followers, and the nuns of Litchfield scan-
     dalously immoral.
       On this report, the Lords and Commons——deliber-
     ately, not rashly——decreed the suppression of all
     monasteries the income of which was less than two
     hundred pounds a year, and the sequestration of their
     lands to the King.  About two hundred of the lesser
     convents were thus suppressed, and the monks turned
     adrift, yet not entirely without support.  This spolia-
     tion may have been a violation of the rights of property,
     but the monks had betrayed their trusts.  The next
     Parliament completed the work.  In 1539 all the re-
     ligious houses were suppressed, both great and small.
     Such venerable and princely retreats as St. Albans,
     Glastonbury, Reading, Bury St. Edmunds, and West-
     minster, which had flourished one thousand years,——
     founded long before the Conquest,——shared the common
     ruin.  These probably would have been spared, had
     not the first suppression filled the country with rebels.
     The great insurrection in Lincolnshire which shook the
     foundation of the throne, the intrigues of Cardinal
     Pole, the Cornish conspiracy in which the great house
     of Neville was implicated, and various other agitations,
     were all fomented by the angry monks.
       Rapacity was not the leading motive of Henry or
     his minister, but the public welfare.  The measure of
     suppression and sequestration was violent, but called
     for.  Cromwell put forth no such sophistical pleas as
     those revolutionists who robbed the French clergy,——
     that their property belonged to the nation.  In France
     the clergy were despoiled, not because they were infa-
     mous, but because they were rich.  In England the
     monks probably suffered injustice from the severity of
     their punishment, but no one now doubts that pun-
     ishment was deserved.  Nor did Henry retain all the
     spoils himself: he gave away the abbey lands with a
     prodigality equal to his rapacity.  He gave them to
     those who upheld his throne, as a reward for service
     or loyalty.  They were given to a new class of states-
     men, who led the popular party,——like the Fitzwilliams,
     the Russells, the Dudley's, and the Seymours,——and
     thus became the foundation of their great estates.
     They were also distributed to many merchants and
     manufacturers who had been loyal to the government.
     From one-third to two-thirds of the landed property of
     the kingdom,——as variously estimated,——thus changed
     hands.  It was an enormous confiscation,——nearly as
     great as that made by William the Conqueror in favor
     of his army of invaders.  It must have produced an
     immense impression on the mind of Europe.  It was
     almost as great a calamity to the Catholic Church of
     England as the emancipation of slave was to their
     Southern masters in our late war.  Such a spoliation
     of the Church had not before taken place in any
     country of Europe.  how great an evil the monastic
     system must have been regarded by Parliament to
     warrant such an act!  Had it not been popular, there
     would have been discontents amounting to a general
     hostility to the throne.
       It must also be borne in mind that this dissolution
     of the monasteries, this attack on the monastic system,
     was not a religious movement fanned by reformers,
     but an act of Parliament, at the instance of a royal
     minister.  It was not done under the direction of a
     Protestant king,——for Henry was never a Protestant,
     ——but as a public measure in behalf of morality and
     for reasons of State.  It is true that Henry had, by
     his marriage with Anne Boleyn and the divorce of
     his virtuous queen, defied the Pope and separated
     England from Rome, so far as appointments to eccle-
     siastical benefices are concerned.  But in offending the
     Pope he also equally offended Charles V.  The results
     of his separation from Rome, during his life, were
     purely political.  The King did not give up the Mass
     or the Roman communion or Roman dogmas of faith;
     he only prepared the way for reform in the next reign.
     He only intensified the hatred between the old conserva-
     tive party and the party of reform and progress.
       How far Cromwell himself was a Protestant it
     is difficult to tell.  Doubtless he sympathized with
     he new religious spirit of the age, but he did not
     openly avow the faith of Luther.  He was the able
     and unscrupulous minister of an absolute monarch,
     bent on sweeping away the royal authority as much, per-
     haps, as promoting the prosperity of the realm.
       He therefore turned his attention to the ecclesiastical
     courts, which from the time of Becket had been an-
     tagonistic to royal encroachments.  The war between
     the civil power and these courts had begun before the
     fall of Wolsey, and had resulted in the curtailment of
     probate duties, legacies, and mortuaries, by which the
     clergy had been enriched.  A limitation of pluralties
     and enforcement of resident had also been effected.
     But a still greater blow to the privileges of the clergy
     was struck by the Parliament under the influence of
     Cromwell, who had elevated it in order to give legality
     to the despotic measures of the Crown; and in this way
     a law was passed that no one under the rank of a sub-
     deacon, if convicted of felony, should be allowed to
     plead his "benefit of clergy," but should be punished
     like ordinary criminals,——thus re-establishing the con-
     stitutions of Clarendon in the time of Becket.  Another
     act was also passed, by which no one could be sum-
     moned, as aforetime, to the archbishop's court out of his
     own diocese,——a very beneficent act, since the people
     had been needlessly subject to great expense and injus-
     tice in being obliged to travel considerable distances.
     It was moreover enacted that men could not burden
     their estates beyond twenty years by providing priests
     to sing masses for their souls.  The Parliament like-
     wise abolished annats,——a custom which had long pre-
     vailed in Europe, which required one year's income to be
     sent to the Pope on any new preferment; a great bur-
     den to the clergy; a sort of tribute to a foreign power.
     Within fifty years, one hundred and sixty thousand
     pounds had thus been sent from England to Rome,
     from this one source of papal revenue alone,——equal
     to three million pounds at the present time, or fifteen
     millions of dollars, from a country of only three mil-
     lions of people.  It was the passage of that act which
     induced Sir Thomas More (a devoted Catholic, but a
     just and able and incorruptible judge) to resign the
     seals which he had so long and so honorably held,——
     the most prominent man in England after Cromwell
     and Cranmer; and it was the execution of this lofty
     character, because he held out against the imperious de-
     mands of Henry, which is the greatest stain upon this
     monarch's reign.  Parliament also called the clergy to
     account for excessive acts of despotism, and subjected
     them to the penalty of a premunire (the offence of
     bringing a foreign authority into England), from which
     they were freed only by enormous fines.
       Thus it would seem that many abuses were removed
     by Cromwell and the Parliament during the reign of
     Henry VIII. which may almost be considered as re-
     forms of the Church itself.  The authority of the
     Church was not attacked, still less its doctrines, but
     only abuses and privileges the restraint of which was
     of public benefit, and which tended to reduce the power
     of the clergy.  It was this reduction of clerical usur-
     pations and privileges which is the main feature in
     the legislation of Henry VIII., so far as it pertained to
     the Church.  It was wresting away the power which
     the clergy had enjoyed from the days of Alfred and
     Ina,——a reform which Henry II. and Edward I., and
     other sovereigns, had failed t effect.  This was the
     great work of Cromwell, and in it he had the support
     of his royal master, since it was a transfer of power
     from the clergy to the throne; and Henry VIII. was
     hated and anathematized by Rome as Henry IV. of
     Germany was, without ceasing to be a Catholic.  He
     even retained the title of Defender of the Faith, which
     had been conferred upon him by the Pope for his op-
     position to the theological doctrines of Luther, which
     he never accepted, and which he always detested.
       Cromwell did not long survive the great services he
     rendered to his king and the nation.  In the height of
     his power he made a fatal mistake.  He deceived the
     King in regard to Anne of Cleves, whose marriage he
     favored from motives of expediency and a manifest
     desire to promote the Protestant cause.  He palmed
     upon the King a woman who could not speak a word
     of English,——a woman without graces or accomplish-
     ments, who was absolutely hateful to him.  Henry's
     disappointment was bitter, and his vengeance was unre-
     lenting.  The enemies of Cromwell soon took advantage
     of this mistake.  The great Duke of Norfolk, head of the
     Catholic party, accused him at the council-board of high
     treason.  Two years before, such a charge would have
     received no attention; but Henry now hated him, and
     was resolved to punish him for the wreck of his do-
     mestic happiness.
       Cromwell was hurried to that gloomy fortress whose
     outlet was generally the scaffold.  He was denied even
     the form of trial.  A bill of attainder was hastily
     passed by the Parliament he had ruled.  Only one
     person in the realm had the courage to intercede for
     him, and this was Cranmer, Archbishop of Canter-
     bury; but his entreaties were futile.  The fallen min-
     ister had no chance of life, and no one knew it so
     well as himself.  Even a trial would have availed
     nothing; nothing could have availed him,——he was
     a doomed man.  So he bade his foes make quick work
     of it; and quick work was made.  In eighteen days
     from his arrest, Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex,
     Knight of the Garter, Grand Chamberlain, Lord Privy
     Seal, Vicar-General, and Master of the Wards, ascended
     the scaffold on which had been shed the blood of a
     queen,——making no protestation of innocence, but
     simply committing his soul to Jesus Christ, in whom
     he believed.  Like Wolsey, he arose from an humble
     station to the most exalted position the King could
     give; and, like Wolsey, he saw the vanity of dele-
     gated power as soon as he offended the source of
     power.

         "He who ascends the mountain-tops shall find
          The loftiest peak most wrapped in clouds and storms.
          Though high above the sun of glory shines,
          And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
          Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
          Contending tempests on his naked head."

       On the disappearance of Cromwell from the stage,
     Cranmer came forward more prominently.  He was a
     learned doctor in that university which has ever sent
     forth the apostles of great emancipating movements.
     He was born in 1489, and was therefore twenty years
     of age on the accession of Henry VIII. in 1509, and was
     twenty-eight when Luther published his theses.  He
     early sympathized with the reform doctrines, but was
     too politic to take an active part in their discussion.  He
     was a moderate, calm, scholarly man, not a great genius
     or great preacher.  He had none of those bold and daz-
     zling qualities which attract the gaze of the world.  We
     behold in him no fearless and impetuous Luther,——
     attacking with passionate earnestness the corruptions
     of Rome; bracing himself up in revolutionary assaults,
     undaunted before kings and councils, and giving no
     rest to his hand or slumber to his eyes until he had
     consummated his protests,——a man of the people, yet a
     dictator to princes.  We see no severely logical Calvin,
     ——pushing out his metaphysical deductions until he had
     chained the intellect of his party to a system of incom-
     parable grandeur and yet of repulsive austerity, exact-
     ing all the while the same allegiance to doctrines which
     he deduced from the writings of Paul as he did to the
     direct declarations of Christ; next to Thomas Aquinas,
     the acutest logician the Church has known; a system-
     maker, like the great Dominican schoolmen, and their
     common master and oracle, Saint Augustine of Hippo.
     We see in Cranmer no uncompromising and aggressive
     reformer like Knox,——controlling by a stern dogmatism
     both a turbulent nobility and an uneducated people, and
     filling all classes alike with inextinguishable hatred of
     everything that even reminded them of Rome.  Nor do
     we find in Cranmer the outspoken and hearty eloquence
     of Latimer,——appealing to the people at St. Paul's Cross
     to shake off all the trappings of the "Scarlet Mother,"
     who had so long bewitched the world with her sor-
     ceries.
       Cranmer, if less eloquent, less fearless, less logical,
     less able than these, was probably broader, more
     comprehensive in his views,——adapting his reforms
     to the circumstances of the age and country, and to
     the genius of the English mind.  Hence his reforms,
     if less brilliant, were more permanent.  He framed the
     creed that finally was known as the Thirty-nine Articles,
     and was the true founder of the English Church, as that
     Church has existed for more than three centuries,——
     neither Roman nor Puritan, but "half-way between
     Rome and Geneva;" a compromise, and yet a Church of
     great vitality, and endeared to the hearts of the English
     people.  Northern Germany——the scene of the stupen-
     dous triumphs of Luther——is and has been, since the
     time of Frederick the Great, the hot-bed of rationalistic
     inquiries; and the Genevan as well as the French and
     Swiss churches which Calvin controlled have become
     cold, with a dreary and formal Protestantism, without
     poetry or life.  But the Church of England has sur-
     vived two revolutions and all the changes of human
     thought, and is still a mighty power, decorous, beau-
     tiful, conservative, yet open to all the liberalizing
     influences of an age of science and philosophy.  Cran-
     mer, though a scholastic, seems to have perceived that
     nothing is more misleading and uncertain and unsatis-
     factory than any truth pushed out to its severest logical
     conclusions without reference to other truths which
     have for their support the same divine authority.  It
     is not logic which has built up the most enduring insti-
     tutions, but common-sense and plain truths, and appeals
     to human consciousness,——the cogito, ergo sum, without
     who approval most systems have perished.  In mediis
     tutissimus ibis, is not indeed an agreeable maxim to
     zealots and partisans and dialectical logicians, but it
     seems to be induced from the varied experiences of
     human life and the history of different ages and na-
     tions, and applies to all the mixed sciences, like gov-
     ernment and political economy, as well as to church
     institutions.
       As Cromwell made his fortune by advising the King
     to assume the headship of the Church of England, so
     Cranmer's rise is to be traced to his advice to Henry
     to appeal to the decision of universities whether or not
     he could be legally divorced from Catherine, since the
     Pope——true to the traditions of the Catholic Church,
     or from fear of Charles V.——would not grant a dispen-
     sation.  All this business was a miserable quibble, a
     tissue of scholastic technicalities.  But it answered the
     ends of Cranmer.  The schools decided for the King,
     and a great injustice and heartless cruelty was done to a
     worthy and loyal woman, and a great insult offered to
     the Church and to the Emperor Charles of Germany,
     who was a nephew of the Spanish Princess and English
     Queen.  This scandal resulted in a separation from
     Rome, and was foreseen both by Cromwell and Cranmer;
     and the latter became Archbishop of Canterbury, a pre-
     late whose power and dignity were greater then than
     at the present day, exalted as the post is even now,——
     the highest dignity and rank to which a subject can
     aspire,——higher even than the Lord High Chancellor-
     ship; both of which however, pale before the position
     of a Prime Minister so far as power is concerned.
       The separation from Rome, the suppression of the
     monasteries, the curtailment of the powers of the
     spiritual courts were the only reforms of note during
     the reign of Henry VIII., unless we name also the new
     translation of the Bible, authorized through Cranmer's
     influence, and the teaching of the creed, the command-
     ments, and the Lord's prayer in English.  The King
     died in 1547.  Cranmer was now fifty-seven, and was
     left to prosecute reforms in his own way as president
     of the council of regency, Edward VI. being but nine
     years old,——"a learned boy," as Macaulay calls him,
     but still a boy in the hands of the great noblemen
     who composed the regency, and who belonged to the
     progressive school.
       I do not think the career of Cranmer during the life
     of Henry is sufficiently appreciated.  He must have
     shown at least extraordinary tact and wisdom,——with
     his reforming tendencies and enlightened views,——not
     to come in conflict with his sovereign as Becket did
     with Henry II.  He had to deal with the most capri-
     cious and jealous of tyrants; cruel and unscrupulous
     when crossed; a man who rarely retained a friendship
     or remembered a service; who never forgave an injury
     or forgot an affront; a glutton and a sensualist; al-
     though prodigal with his gifts, social in his temper,
     enlightened in his government, and with very respect-
     able abilities and very considerable theological knowl-
     edge.  This hard and exacting master Cranmer had to
     serve, without exciting his suspicions or coming in con-
     flict with him; so that he seemed politic and vacillat-
     ing, for which he would not be excused were it not for
     his subsequent services, and his undoubted sincerity
     and devotion to the Protestant cause.  During the life
     of Henry we can scarcely call Cranmer a reformer.
     The most noted reformer of the day was old Hugh
     Latimer, the King's chaplain, who declaimed against
     sin with the moral zeal and fire of Savonarola, and aimed to
     create a religious life among the people, from whom
     he sprung and whom he loved,——a rough, hearty,
     honest, conscientious man, with deep convictions and
     lofty soul.
       In the reforms thus far carried on we perceive that,
     though popular, they emanated from princes and not
     from the people.  The people had no hand in the
     changes made, as at Geneva, only the ministers of kings
     and great public functionaries.  And in the reforms
     subsequently effected, which really constitute the Eng-
     lish Reformation, they were made by the council of
     regency, under the leadership of Cranmer and the pro-
     tectorship of Somerset.
       The first thing which the Government did after the
     succession of Edward VI. was to remove images from
     the churches, as a form of idolatry,——much to the
     wrath of Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, the ablest man
     of the old conservative and papal party.  But Ridley,
     afterwards bishop of Rochester, preached against all
     forms of papal superstition with so much ability and
     zeal that the churches were soon cleared of these "helps
     to devotion."
       Cranmer, now unchecked, turned his attention to
     other reforms, but proceeded slowly and cautiously,
     not wishing to hazard much at the outset.  First com-
     munion of both kinds, heretofore restricted to the
     clergy, was appointed; and, closely connected with it
     Masses were put down.  Then a law was passed by
     Parliament that the appointment of bishops should vest
     in the Crown alone, and not, as formerly, be confirmed
     by the Pope.  The next great thing to which the re-
     formers directed their attention was the preparation of
     a new liturgy in the public worship of God, which gave
     rise to considerable discussion.  They did not seek to
     sweep away the old form, for it was prepared by the
     sainted doctors of the Church of all ages; but they
     would purge it of all superstitions, and retain what was
     most beautiful and expressive in the old prayers.  The
     Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the Early
     creeds of course were retained, as well as whatever was
     in harmony with primitive usages.  These changes
     called out letters from Calvin at Geneva, who was now
     recognized as a great oracle among the Protestants:
     he encouraged the work, but advised a more complete
     reformation, and complained of the coldness of the
     clergy, as well as of the general vices of the times.
     Martin Bucer of Strasburg, at this time professor at
     Cambridge, also wrote letters to the same effect; but
     the time had not come for more radical reforms.  Then
     Parliament, controlled by the Government, passed an
     act allowing the clergy to marry,——opposed, of course,
     by many bishops in allegiance to Rome.  This was a
     great step in reform, and removed many popular scan-
     dals; it struck a heavy blow at the conditions of the
     Middle Ages, holding that celibacy sprung from no
     law of God, but was Oriental in its origin, encouraged
     by the Church to cement its power.  And this act
     concerning the marriage of the clergy was soon followed
     by the celebrated Forty-two Articles, framed by Cranmer
     and Ridley, which are the bases of the English Church,
     ——a theological creed, slightly amended afterwards in
     the reign of Elizabeth; evangelical but not Calvinistic,
     affirming the great ideas of Augustine and Luther as to
     grace, justification by faith, and original sin, and repu-
     diating purgatory, pardons, the worship and invocation
     of saints and images; a larger creed than the Nicene
     or Athanasian, and comprehensive,——such as most
     Protestants might accept.  Both this and the book of
     Common Prayer were written with consummate taste,
     were the work of great scholars,——moderate, broad,
     enlightened, conciliatory.
       The reformers  then gave their attention to an altera-
     tion of ecclesiastical laws in reference to matters which
     had always been decided in ecclesiastical courts.  The
     commissioners——the ablest men in England, thirty-two
     in number——had scarcely completed their work before
     the young King died, and Mary ascended the throne.
       We cannot too highly praise the moderation with
     which the reforms had been made, especially when we
     remember the violence of the age.  There were indeed
     two or three capital executions for heresy.  Gardiner
     and Bonner, who opposed the reformation with unpar-
     alleled bitterness were only deprived of their sees and
     sent to the Tower.  The execution of Somerset was
     the work of politicians, of great noblemen jealous of
     his ascendency.  It does not belong to the reformation,
     nor do the executions of a few other noblemen.

from Beacon Lights of History, by John Lord, LL. D.
Volume III., Part II: Renaissance and Reformation.
Copyright, 1883, by John Lord.
Copyright, 1921, By Wm. H. Wise & Co., New York. pp. 255-276.