Bishops and Clergy of Other Days

The volume now in the reader’s hands requires a few prefatory words of explanation. It contains the lives of five eminent English ministers: Hooper, Latimer, Ward, Baxter, and Gurnall. Of these the two first were Bishops, leaders in the noble army of our Protestant Reformers, and martyrs at the stake in the reign of Queen Mary. ‘The three last were famous Puritan divines, who lived and died in the seventeenth century. Of course I have chosen these five men as subjects of biographies, deliberately, purposely, and with special reasons. What those reasons are I will proceed to explain. (1) I hold, then, that the lives, deaths, and opinions of the leading English Reformers demand special investigation in the present day. The Church of England as it now is, was in great measure the work of their hands.

To them, with a few trifling exceptions, we owe our v Preface.

present Articles, Liturgy, and Homilies. That great Ecclesiastical machinery, whose centre is at Lambeth Palace, and whose influence is more or less felt throughout the world wherever the British flag waves, was purified, remoulded, and recast in its present form by their instrumentality. Can any one doubt that it is of the utmost importance to ascertain what they thought and did, and in defence of what opinions they lived and died é-aphitedby common sense points out that if we want to know who is a true ‘‘ Churchman,”’ we should find out what manner of men the first Churchmen were. The natural way to ascertain what views of religion are ‘‘ Church views,” is to inquire what kind of views were held by our Church Reformers in the sixteenth century. In matters of doctrine, are we of one mind with Cranmer, Ridley, Hooper, and Latimer? If not, we may be sure that our ‘‘Churchmanship”’ is of a very equivocal kind. It cannot be the true Churchmanship of the Reformed Church of England.

Holding these opinions, I have endeavoured to produce a correct sketch of two of the leading champions

of the English Reformation. The two I have chosen,

Preface. vii

undoubtedly, were in some respects not equal to Cranmer or Ridley. In popular talent, however, and general influence with their countrymen, they were probably second to none. JI venture the conjecture that the middle classes and lower orders of Englishmen in the sixteenth century were more familiar with the names of Hooper and Latimer than of any of the Reformers. None, I suspect, left so deep a mark on the minds of their generation, none were so often talked of round English firesides, as the two whose lives are found in this volume. None, I am firmly persuaded, so thoroughly deserve to be had in honour. They were men of whom the Church of England may well be proud. She may reckon among her sons some perhaps who were their equals; but none, I am sure, who are their superiors. For abounding usefulness in life and noble courage in death, the two Bishops I have tried to photograph in this volume were never surpassed.

Certain modern Churchmen, I am well aware, have tried hard to depreciate the value of the English Reformation, and to vilify the character of the English

Reformers. One writer in particular, who occupies no vill Preface.

mean position among the champions of the Ritualistic or Catholic School, has not scrupled to put in print the following sentences : —

‘‘Robespierre, Danton, Marat, St. Just, Couthon, and the like, merit quite as much admiration and respect as Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, and the others who happened to have the ill luck to be worsted in a struggle wherein they meant to serve their adversaries as they were served themselves.’”’ —

‘It has been brought as a serious charge against men of my school, that we should have been safe under Queen Mary. But we should have been burnt for refusing a new and immoral creed, if that young tiger-cub Edward VI. had lived, and Cranmer had not been arrested in his wicked career by Divine vengeance. Of the depth of infamy into which this wretched man descended as the unscrupulous tool of the tyrant Henry and his minion, Thomas Cromwell, I have no leisure to speak now.” —

‘‘If history were honestly written, Latimer would change places with Bonner, and appear in true colours as the coarse, profane, unscrupulous, persecuting bully

which the other prelate is usually called, and with the

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special brand of cowardice besides, of which no man can accuse Bonner.’’ —

‘‘ Latimer was a coward.”’ —

‘‘ Latimer was perjured and unscrupulous.” —

‘“‘Latimer’s coarseness and profanity are not left to

‘conjecture, nor to the bias of partisans. He has given ample proof of them under his own hand in his still extant sermons.’’ —

(See ‘‘ Innovations:’’ a Lecture by Dr. Littledale, priest of the Church of England. Delivered at Liverpool, April 23, 1868. Pages 15, 16, 17, 44, 45.)

Violent language like this injures nobody but the man who uses it. It utterly defeats its own object. It proves far too much, if it proves anything at all. How any set of men so bad as Dr. Littledale paints the Reformers, could have obtained the influence they undoubtedly obtained, and swayed public opinion as they undoubtedly swayed it, is ‘‘a little difficulty’? which this gentleman has not thought fit to explain. If our ancestors allowed the Reformation to be carried on by men of such wretched characters as Dr. Littledale attributes to the English Reformers, the Englishmen of b x Preface.

that day must have been idiots and fools. It is clear as daylight to my mind, even if there were no historical evidence on the subject, that the generation which really knew Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, and Hooper, thought far more highly of them than Dr. Littledale does. If they had been the bad, worthless men that he represents them, they would never have left such a deep mark on the religious character of England as they certainly did. But after all, what proof does Dr. Littledale give that his low estimate of the English Reformers is correct? I answer unhesitatingly, None that will eather any impartial judge of evidence. The testimony of Fox, the Martyrologist, stands in the way, and how does he get over it? He simply abuses him, or in plain English calls him a liar. He says that he is a ‘‘a mendacious partisan.”’ He styles the ‘Acts and Monuments of Fox” ‘‘a magazine of lying bigotry: a book which no educated man now living, possessed of any self-respect or honesty, does otherwise than repudiate with contempt and aversion.” (See lecture on ‘Innovations,”’ already quoted.) Attacks such as these are very ancient things. From

the day that the good old ‘‘Book of Martyrs” first

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appeared, it has been assailed and abused more violently by the advocates of Popery than any uninspired book that ever was printed. Dr. Littledale is only walking in the steps of Harpsfield, Parsons, Laud, Heylin, the Roman Catholic, Dr. Milner, and others. The objections of these writers will be found fully ek arnmnen in the preface to Canon Townshend’s edition of Fox. That preface is a document which is far too little known. It deserves an attentive perusal.

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