History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth Volume III Part 24

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SIX ARTICLES.

The three centuries which have pa.s.sed over the world since the Reformation have soothed the theological animosities which they have failed wholly to obliterate. An enlarged experience of one another has taught believers of all sects that their differences need not be pressed into mortal hatred; and we have been led forward unconsciously into a recognition of a broader Christianity than as yet we are able to profess, in the respectful acknowledgment of excellence wherever excellence is found. Where we see piety, continence, courage, self-forgetfulness, there, or not far off, we know is the spirit of the Almighty; and, as we look around us among our living contemporaries, or look back with open eyes into the history of the past, we see--we dare not in voluntary blindness say that we do not see--that G.o.d is no respecter of "denominations," any more than he is a respecter of persons. His highest gifts are shed abroad with an even hand among the sects of Christendom, and petty distinctions of opinion melt away and become invisible in the fulness of a grander truth.

Thus, even among the straitest sects whose theories least allow room for lat.i.tude, liberty of conscience has found recognition, and has become the law of modern thought. It is as if the ancient Catholic unity, which was divided in the sixteenth century into separate streams of doctrine, as light is divided by the prism, was again imperceptibly returning; as if the coloured rays were once more blending themselves together in a purer and more rich transparency.

In this happy change of disposition, we have a difficulty in comprehending the intensity with which the different religious parties in England, as well as on the Continent, once detested each other. The fact is manifest; but the understanding refuses to realize its causes.

We can perceive, indeed, that there may have been a fiery antagonism between Catholics and Reformers; but the animosities between Protestant and Protestant, the feeling which led Barnes to prosecute Lambert, or the Landgrave of Hesse to urge Henry VIII. to burn the Anabaptists, is obscure and unintelligible. Nevertheless, the more difficult it may be to imagine the nature of such a feeling, the more essential is it to bear in mind the reality of its existence; and a consequent and corollary upon it of no small importance must also be carefully remembered, that in the descending scale of the movement no sect or party recognised any shadow of division among those who were more advanced than themselves. To the Romanist, schism and heresy were an equal crime. All who had separated from the Papal communion were alike outcasts, cut off from grace, children of perdition. The Anglican could extend the terms of salvation only to those who submitted to ordinances, to the apostolical succession, and the system of the sacraments; the Lutherans anathematized those who denied the real presence; the followers of Zuinglius and Calvin, judging others as they were themselves judged, disclaimed such as had difficulties on the nature of the Trinity; the Unitarians gave the same measure to those who rejected the inspiration of Scripture; and with the word "heretic" went along the full pa.s.sion of abhorrence which had descended the historical stream of Christianity in connexion with the name.

[Sidenote: State of religious parties in England.]

Desiring the reader, then, to keep these points prominently before him, I must now describe briefly the position of the religious parties in England at the existing crisis.

[Sidenote: The Romanists.]

First, there was the party of insurrection, the avowed or secret Romanists, those who denied the royal supremacy, who regarded the Pope as their spiritual sovereign, and retained or abjured their allegiance to their temporal prince as the Pope permitted or ordered. These were traitors in England, the hope of the Catholic powers abroad. When detected and obstinate, they were liable to execution; but they were cowed by defeat and by the death of their leaders, and for the present were subsiding towards insignificance.

[Sidenote: The Anglicans.]

Secondly, there were the Anglicans, strictly orthodox in the speculative system of the faith, content to separate from Rome, but only that they might bear Italian fruit more profusely and luxuriantly when rooted in their own soil. Of these the avowed leaders were the majority of the bishops and the peers of the old creation, agreeing for the present to make the experiment of independence, but with a secret dislike to change, and a readiness, should occasion require, to return to the central communion. Weak in their reasoning, and selfish in their objects, the Anglicans were of importance only from the support of the conservative English instinct, which then as ever preferred the authority of precedent to any other guide, and defended established opinions and established inst.i.tutions because they had received them from their fathers, and because their understandings were slow in entertaining new convictions.

[Sidenote: The Lutherans.]

To the third or Lutheran party, belonged Cranmer, Latimer, Barnes, Shaxton, Crome, Hilsey, Jerome, Barlow, all the government Reformers of position and authority, adhering to the real presence, and, in a general sense, to the sacraments, but melting them away in the interpretation.

The true creed of these men was spiritual, not mechanical. They abhorred idolatry, images, pilgrimages, ceremonies, with a Puritan fervour. They followed Luther in the belief in justification by faith, they rejected ma.s.ses, they did not receive the sacerdotal system, they doubted purgatory, they desired that the clergy should be allowed to marry, they differed from the Protestants in the single but vital doctrine of transubstantiation. This party after a few years ceased to exist, developing gradually from the type of Wittenberg to that of Geneva.

[Sidenote: The Protestants proper.]

Lastly, and still confounded in a common ma.s.s of abomination, lay Zuinglians, Anabaptists, sacramentarians, outcasts disowned and cursed by all the rest as a stigma and reproach; those whose hearts were in the matter, who supplied the heat which had melted the crust of habit, and had made the Reformation possible.

[Sidenote: The creed of Cromwell.]

[Sidenote: The creed of the king.]

[Sidenote: Parties in the Privy Council.]

For the present the struggle in the state lay between the Anglicans and the Lutherans--the king and Cromwell lying again between them. Cromwell, on the whole orthodox in matters of speculation, cared, nevertheless, little for such matters; his true creed was a hatred of charlatans, and of the system which nursed and gave them power; and his sympathy was gradually bursting the bounds of a tradition which continued to hamper him. The king was constant to his place of mediator; he insisted on the sacraments, yet he abhorred the magical aspect of them. He differed from the Anglican in his zeal for the dissemination of the Bible, in his detestation of the frauds, impostures, profligacies, idlenesses, ignorances, which had disgraced equally the secular and regular clergy, and in his fixed English resolution never more to tolerate the authority of the Pope. He differed from the Lutherans, and thus more and more from Cromwell, in his dislike of theoretic novelties, in an inability to clear himself from attaching a special character to the priesthood, in an adherence generally to the historical faith, and an anxiety to save himself and the country from the reproach of apostacy. A sharp line divided the Privy Council. Cranmer headed the Reformers, supported by the late-created peers, Cromwell, Lord Russell, and for a time Lord Southampton and the lord chancellor; opposed to these were the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, Sir Anthony Brown, Gardiner, Bonner who was now Bishop of London, the Bishops of Durham, Chichester, and Lincoln; and the two parties regarded each other across the board with ever deepening hatred, with eyes watching for any slip which might betray their antagonists to the powers of the law, and were only prevented by the king's will from flying into open opposition.

[Sidenote: The confidence of the middle cla.s.ses in the king.]

In the country, the sympathy of the middle cla.s.ses was, for the most part, with Henry in preference to either Cranmer or Gardiner, Norfolk or Cromwell. Even in the Pilgrimage of Grace the king had been distinguished from his advisers. A general approbation of the revolt from a foreign usurpation led the body of the nation to support him cordially against the Pope; and therefore, as long as there was danger from Paul or Paul's friends, in England or out of it, Cromwell remained in power as the chief instrument by which the Papal domination had been overthrown. But there was an understanding felt, if not avowed, both by sovereign and subjects, that even loyalty had its limits. If it were true--as the king had ever a.s.sured them that it was not true--that Cromwell was not only maintaining English independence and reforming practical abuses, but encouraging the dreaded and hated "heresy," then indeed their duties and their conduct might a.s.sume another aspect.

[Sidenote: The prospects of Cromwell slowly clouding.]

And seeing that this "heresy," that faith in G.o.d and the Bible, as distinguished from faith in Catholicism, was the root and the life of the whole change, that the political and practical revolution was but an _alteration of season_, necessary for the nurture of the divine seed which an invisible hand had sown--seeing that Cromwell himself was opening his eyes to know this important fact, and would follow fearlessly wherever his convictions might lead him, appearances boded ill for the terms on which he might soon be standing with the king, ill for the "unity and concord" which the king imagined to be possible.

[Sidenote: Division continues to spread.]

Twice already we have seen Henry pouring oil over the water. The "Articles of Religion" and the "Inst.i.tution of a Christian Man" had contained, perhaps, the highest wisdom on the debated subjects which as yet admitted of being expressed in words. But they had fallen powerless.

The decree had gone out, but the war of words had not ceased. The Gospel had brought with it its old credentials. It had divided nation against nation, house against house, child against father. It had brought, "not peace, but a sword:" the event long ago foretold and long ago experienced. But Henry could not understand the signs of the times; and once again he appealed to his subjects in language of pathetic reproach.

[Sidenote: The king desiring to act as moderator between two extremes,]

[Sidenote: Deplores the quarrels which arise from trifles.]

[Sidenote: The dull and the quick should learn to draw in one yoke.]

"The King's Highness to all and singular his loving subjects sends his greeting. His Majesty, desiring othing more than to plant Christ and his doctrine in all his people's hearts, hath thought good to declare how much he is offended with all them that wring and wrest his words, driving them to the maintenance of their fantasies, abuses, and naughty opinions; not regarding how his Highness, as a judge indifferent between two parties, whereof the one is too rash and the other too dull, laboureth for agreement. Seeing the breach of small matters to be cause of great dissension, his Highness had charged his subjects to observe such ceremonies and rites as have been heretofore used in his Church, giving therewith commandment to the bishops and curates to instruct the people what ceremonies are, what good they do when not misused, what hurt when taken to be of more efficacy and strength than they are. His Highness, being careful over all his people, is as loath that the dull party should fancy their ceremonies to be the chief points of Christian religion, as he is miscontent with the rash party which hunt down what they list without the consent of his Grace's authority. His Highness wills that the disobedience of them that seek their l.u.s.ts and liberties shall be repressed, and they to bear the infirmity and weakness of their neighbours until such time as they, enstrengthened, may be able to go in like pace with them, able to draw in one yoke: for St. Paul would a decent order in the Church; and, because G.o.d is a G.o.d of peace and not of dissension, it were meet that all they that would be his should agree on all points, and especially in matters of religion.

[Sidenote: The object of sacraments and ceremonies,]

[Sidenote: Which are signs of holy things, not instruments of salvation;]

[Sidenote: But the priests are more careful over the form than the matter.]

[Sidenote: Ceremonies must be used for the present, but used without superst.i.tion.]

"G.o.d's will, love, and goodness ought, with all reverence, to be kept in memory; and therefore the old forefathers thought it well done that certain occasions might be devised to keep them in remembrance, and so invented signs and tokens which, being seen of the eye, might put the heart in mind of his will and promises. For, as the word is a token that warneth us by the ear, so the sacraments ordained by Christ, and ceremonies invented by men, are sensible tokens to warn us by the eye of that self-same will and pleasure that the word doth; and, as the word is but an idle voice without it be understood, so are all ceremonies but beggarly things, dumb and dead, if the meaning of them be not known.

They are but means and paths to religion, made to shew where Christian people must seek their comfort and where they must establish their belief, and not to be taken as savers or workers of any part of salvation. But his Grace seeth priests much readier to deal holy bread, to sprinkle holy water, than to teach the people what dealing or sprinkling sheweth. If the priests would exhort their paris.h.i.+oners, and put them in remembrance of the things that indeed work all our salvation, neither the ceremonies should be dumb nor the people would take that that is the way of their journey to be the end of their journey. Neither bread nor water nor any indifferent thing can be holy, but it be because it bringeth men to holy thoughts, to G.o.dly contemplations, and telleth them where they may and must seek holiness.

Ceremonies cannot yet be put down, because the people are evil taught, and would be much offended with the sudden overthrow of them; but, if they be used, their meaning and signification not declared, they are nought else but shadows without a body--sh.e.l.ls where there is no kernel--seals of decision without any writing--witnesses without any covenant, text, or promise. And for this cause the King's Highness commanded that ceremonies should be used, and used without superst.i.tion; and now, of late, some have blurted in the people's ears that their ceremonies be come home again, taking them as things in themselves necessary--slandering all such as, in their preaching, have reproved the misuse of them.

[Sidenote: For all past offences the king grants a general pardon.]

[Sidenote: And he trusts that they will remember and deserve his clemency.]

"The King's Highness, being grounded upon a surer foundation than to waver or revoke any his former injunctions, might worthily punish such wresters of his words and changers of his will and pleasure; but for as much as his Grace is persuaded that clemency often times worketh more than pain can, and seeing many of his loving subjects punished since his last proclamation, not only for evil opinions, but also for words spoken of long time past, his Grace, tendering nothing more than the wealth and comfort of his subjects, doth think it meet rather to heal all diseased, fearful, and hollow hearts, than by dread and fear to keep them still faint friends--faint to G.o.d, faint to the truth, faint to his Highness.

And, in this consideration, his Highness granteth a general pardon and discharge to all and singular his loving subjects for all and singular causes, matters, suits, preachings, writings, and other things by them or any or them done, had, made, defended, or spoken, touching matters of Christian religion, whereby they might have been brought in danger of the law for suspicion of heresy. And his Highness trusteth that this his gracious pity shall more effectually work the abolis.h.i.+ng of detestable heresies and fond opinions than shall the extreme punishment of the law.

For, where fear of hurt should be a cause that they should less love his Highness than their duty bound them to do, now shall this be an occasion, his Grace thinketh, not only to make them tender his Highness's will and pleasure, but also to cause them, of honest love, quite to cast away all foolish, fond, evil, and condemned opinions, and joyfully to return to the elect number of Christ's Church.

"All that is past, as touching this matter, his Highness pardoneth and frankly forgetteth it wholly. But, as his Grace desireth the confusion of error, this way so failing of his purpose and expectation, his Highness will use, albeit much against his will, another way--that, when gentleness cannot work, then to provide what the laws and execution of them can do."[433]

[Sidenote: The truth to be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence.]

[Sidenote: Inversion of the natural order of things.]

[Sidenote: Misuse of the Bible.]

[Sidenote: Insults to the bishops.]

[Sidenote: Scandals occasioned by the marriages of clergy.]

What persuasion could effect this address would have effected; but kindness and menace were alike unavailing. A seed was growing and to grow, which the king knew not of; and it was to grow, as it were, in the disguise of error, with that abrupt violence which so often, among human beings, makes truth a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence. The young were generally on one side, the old on the other--an inversion of the order of nature when the old are wrong and the young are right.[434]

The learned, again, were on the wrong side, the ignorant were on the right--a false relation, also fertile in evil. Peasant theologians in the public-houses disputed over their ale on the mysteries of justification, and from words pa.s.sed soon to blows. The Bibles, which lay open in every parish church, became the text-books of self-instructed fanatics. The voluble orator of the village was chosen by his companions, or, by imagined superior intelligence, appointed himself, to read and expound; and, ever in such cases, the most forward was the most pa.s.sionate and the least wise. Often, for the special annoyance of old-fas.h.i.+oned church-goers, the time of divine service was chosen for a lecture; and opinions were shouted out in "loud high voices," which, in the ears of half the congregation, were d.a.m.nable heresy.[435] The king's proclamations were but as the words of a man speaking in a tempest--blown to atoms as they are uttered. The bishops were bearded in their own palaces with insolent defiance; Protestant mobs would collect to overawe them on their tribunals;[436] and Cromwell was const.i.tuted a referee, to whom victims of episcopal persecution rarely appealed without finding protection.[437] Devout communities were scandalized by priests marrying their concubines, or bringing wives whom they had openly chosen to their parsonages. The celibacy of the clergy was generally accepted as a theory; and, though indulgence had been liberally extended to human weakness and frailty, the opinion of the world was less complacent when secret profligacy stepped forward into the open day under the apparent sanction of authority.[438]

[Sidenote: Outrages in churches during the celebration of the ma.s.s.]