Passion taken from the Gospels, and divided into ten sections; a Practical discourse on the Passion; Instructions for children; a Catechetical dialogue between a father and son; Prayers against blindness and hardness of heart: several Prayers and Thanksgivings from Scripture, and the Dirige, or Office for the souls of the dead, with a Preface prefixed, which inveighs against the practice of misapplying to the dead, passages used by the living to excite the compassion of friends. "We have rung and sung, mumbled and murmured, and piteously pewled a certain sort of Psalms, which make no more for the purpose than Te Deum, or Gloria in excelsis. In the Dirige, there is nothing taken out of Scripture, that makes any more mention of souls departed, than doth the tale of Robin Hood*." Then follow Commendations, &c. In some copies the Collects, Epistles and Gospels throughout the year are added; and in others, expositions of them. In the smaller Volumes, many of the articles already enumerated are omitted. But in both the smaller and larger editions, several of the Tracts, interspersed among the Prayers and devotional Offices, and in particular the Preface or Admonition to the Reader, with the Dialogue, are directly levelled against abuses and superstitions which then prevailed +. The publication of the Primer then, was one of the first steps towards the reformation of doctrine and worship: and the great variety of Editions, through which it passed in a very few years, is a clear proof that an immense number of copies must have been disseminated through the kingdom ‡. * Preface to the Dirige. ↑ After the fall of Cromwell, some of the treatises were interdicted, and even deemed heretical. See Bonner's Injunctions of 1542, and Strype's Mem. in 1535. The Popish party appear to have been no less active in dispersing Primers favourable to their cause. The King's Injunction of May 6, When we further recollect that the Royal authority, which at this time prohibited the reading of the English Bible and many devotional books*, repeatedly enjoined the daily use of the King's Primer, either in public or private, we may reasonably conclude that the book was very popular, and extremely beneficial to the cause of Reformation. The In the year following, that is, in 1536, Articles of Religion were agreed upon in Convocation †, and ordered by the King to be published. From the Royal Declaration prefixed, we learn that the design of the Articles, was to prevent diversity of opinion both in matters of faith and worship, and to establish unity and concord in the Church of England. By these Articles, the Holy Scriptures and the three Creeds, are constituted the standard of faith and doctrine. foundation of Christian belief, and the terms of the covenant of grace, are stated and explained. Out of the seven Romish Sacraments, of four no notice whatever is taken; Baptism, Penance, and the Eucharist, are the only three mentioned. The direct worship of Saints and Angels, or the "honouring them with the honour due only unto God," is expressly prohibited; yet the "praying to them to pray for us, and with us," is declared to be "very laudable.” 1546, authorising a Primer printed by Grafton in the same year, mentions "the adversity (opposition) of Primer books now abroad, whereof are almost innumerable sorts ;" and commands "one uniform order to be taught to children, and used for ordinary Prayers by all that were not learned in the Latin tongue." * The Proclamation issued in 1535, calling in seditious books, was principally meant to suppress Popish books of devotion, and such as favoured the pretensions of the Bishop of Rome, Strype's Mem. Vol. I. p. 221. + In the Convocation held this year, the Clergy likewise drew up a petition, which was presented to the King, praying "that he would graciously indulge unto his subjects of the laity, the reading of the Bible in the English tongue, and that a new translation may be made for the purpose." Heylin, Church of England justified. P. 8. * Abuses concerning Images and the doctrine of Purgatory, are corrected; and the reason of observing various Rites and Ceremonies is explained. But though many of the errors * * The article relating to Images, and that to Rites and Ceremonies, are as follows: 66 OF IMAGES. : "As touching images, truth it is, that the same have been said in the Old Testament, for the great abuses of them to have been some time destroyed and put down; and, in the New Testament, they have been also allowed, as good authors do declare; wherefore we will, that all Bishops and Preachers shall instruct and teach our people committed by us unto their spiritual charge, how they ought and may use them; and first, that there may be attributed unto them, that they be representers of virtue and good example; and that they also be, by occasion, the kindlers and stirrers of men's minds, and make men oft to remember and lament their sins and offences; especially the Images of Christ and our Lady; and that therefore it is meet they should stand in the Churches, and none otherwise to be esteemed and to the intent the rude people should not from henceforth take such superstition, as in time past it is thought that the same hath used to do; we will, that our Bishops and Preachers diligently shall teach them, and, according to this doctrine, reform their abuses, for else there might fortune idolatry to ensue, which God forbid : and as for incensing of them, and kneeling and offering unto them, with other like worshippings; although the same hath entered by devotion, and fallen into custom, yet the people ought to be diligently taught, that they in no wise do it, nor think it meet to be done, to the same Images, but only to be done to God and his honour: although it be done before the Images, whether it be of Christ, of the Cross, or of our Lady, or of any other Saint beside." 66 OF RITES AND CEREMONIES. "As concerning the Rites and Ceremonies of Christ's Church, as to have such vestments in doing God's service, as be and have been most part used: as sprinkling of holy water, to put us in remembrance of our Baptism and of the blood of Christ, sprinkled for our redemption on the Cross; giving of holy bread, to put us in remembrance of the sacrament of the altar; that all christened men be one body mystical of Christ, as the bread is made of many grains, and yet but one loaf; and to put us in remembrance of our receiving of the holy sacrament and body of Christ, the which we ought to receive in right of Popery are thus corrected, the old notions concerning Auricular confession, Sacerdotal absolution or the power of the Priest to absolve, the Corporal presence, and some other points of inferior importance are retained *. The noble author of the Life of Henry VIII. affirms, that from some records it would appear, that the Articles were devised by Henry himself, and that Cromwell afterward recommended them to the Convocation. But it is more probable that Cranmer was employed in drawing them up; for some of them are evidently written in Cranmer's manner. To confirm positions laid down in the Articles, charity; which, in the beginning of Christ's Church, men did more often receive than they use now a days to do; bearing of candles on Candlemas-day, in memory of Christ, the spiritual light; of whom Simeon did prophesy, as is read in the Church that day: giving of ashes on Ash-Wednesday, to put in remembrance every Christian man, in the beginning of Lent and Penance, that he is but earth and ashes, and thereto shall return, which is right necessary to be uttered from henceforth in our mother tongue, always on the same day bearing of palms on Palm-Sunday, in memory of receiving of Christ into Jerusalem, a little before his death, that we have the same desire to receive him in our hearts: creeping to the Cross, and humbling ourselves to Christ on Good-Friday before the Cross; and offering there unto Christ before the same, and kissing of it in memory of our redemption by Christ made upon the Cross: setting up of the sepulchre of Christ, whose body after his death was buried: the hallowing of the font, and other like benedictions by the Ministers of Christ's Church; and all other like laudable customs, rites, and ceremonies, be not to be condemned and cast away, but to be used and continued as things good and laudable, to put us in remembrance of those spiritual things that they do signify; not suffering them to be forgotten or to be put in oblivion; but renewing them in our memories, from time to time: but none of these ceremonies hath power to remit sins, but only to stir and lift up our minds unto God, by whom only our sins be forgiven. *Of these Articles of Religion, copious abstracts are given in Strype's Cranmer, b. i. c. 11. and Burnet, vol. i. p. 215. See also Fuller, b. v. and Collier, vol. ii. p. 122. + Lord Herbert. reasons are given, and quotations from Scripture are occasionally added. The practice of confirming or confuting religious opinions by texts of Scripture, instead of bringing quotations from Schoolmen and popish Canons, was principally introduced, into England at least, by Cranmer *. In his letters to Henry, in his speech at the opening of the Convocation under Edward, in his disputations with the Bishop of Winchester, and on many other occasions, we find him insisting on the necessity of keeping close to the rules and doctrines delivered in the Scriptures t. His sentiments on the propriety of assigning reasons for necessary alterations will appear from what he suggests in reply to a letter from the king, relating to the abolition of some superstitious usages. Of the letter and part of the reply, I shall in the notes give an extract in the words of the respective writers, after desiring the reader to remember that they were composed A.D. 1545. * Strype's Cranmer, ↑ Collier, and Archbishop Parker's Brit. Antiq. Henry writes to the Archbishop, “Forasmuch as you, as well in your own name, and in the name of the Bishops of Worcester and Chichester, and other our Chaplains and learned men, whom we appointed with you to peruse certain books of servicę, which we delivered unto you; moved us that the Vigil and ringing of bells all the night long upon All-hallow day at night, and the covering of images in the Churches in the time of Lent; with the lifting up of the veil that covereth the Cross upon Palm-Sunday, with the kneeling to the Cross the same time, might be abolished and put away, for the superstition and other enormities and abuses of the same. First, forasmuch as all the Vigils of our Lady and the Apostles, and all other Vigils, which in the beginning of the Church were godly used; yet for the manifold superstition and abuses which afterwards did grow by means of the same, they be many years past taken away, throughout all Christendom; and there remaineth nothing but the name of Vigil in the Calendar; the thing clearly abolished and put away, saving only upon All-hallow day at night, upon which night is kept Vigil; watching |