35. ANOTHER STEP.

The second step, less noted, was a bold stand made by the convocation, under lead of the bishops, for limiting the royal power over their convocations. It ended in compromise, but was a landmark of what the Church understood as her inherent rights, and could not surrender voluntarily. So far under Warham. The next step, however, rose to the position of Frankfort and of Constance as that to which the Papacy was put back. In A. D. 1534, "the old doctrine was affirmed that a general council represented the Church, and was above the Pope and all bishops, the Bishop of Rome having had no greater jurisdiction given him by God, in the Holy Scriptures, within this realm of England, than any other foreign bishop." Cranmer was now primate, and this was progress to full Cypriote independence and to Nicene ideas of the "ancient customs which ought to prevail. Mark also, all this was done by the Church. No act of Parliament had touched the matter. The "act of Parliament religion" was first seen under Pole and Queen Mary.

36. HOW IT LOOKED IN FRANCE.

When it pleased God to summon King Henry to his own judgment, we must observe how his case was regarded by others. In France, it must have been felt that he had simply carried out Gallican principles to an unprecedented extent; yet without any scruple, and in contempt of Rome,

a mass for his pious soul was performed with all ceremony at Notre Dame, in Paris, by order of Francis the First. How things stood before the later sessions of the Council of Trent, in the minds of men of the time, is evidenced by this striking fact. It had hardly opened its work of seventeen years, when Henry died.

37. THE SEQUEL.

In the reign of Edward the Sixth, the theological reformation was undertaken, and too hastily pressed forward. It pleased God to arrest it just when it might have been imperilled by influences from the Continent, and blessings came in disguise to England when the pious and princely youth passed away. It remained for the short-lived reaction under Mary to give England once more a taste of papal usurpation, and the fires of Smithfield and of Oxford burnt out of the souls of Englishmen the last traces of any lingering fealty to the Roman see. Once more a papal legate entered England, and an act of Parliament overruled the deliberate action of the Church. The legate was only a deacon,2 yet he assumed by papal authority to grant absolution, and that not only from papal censures, but from sins! Thus, a deacon presumed to absolve a whole house of bishops and their priests! Queen Mary adopted and used her father's title of "Head of the Church." In her reign, nothing seems to have been done canonically, if we judge by ancient usages; but Pole

1 See Note B"".

2 See Note C"".

became Archbishop of Canterbury by the royal mandate, which was a confession of her supremacy, and that of her father, too as Catholic and lawful,

38. THE BLOODY QUEEN.

Poor Mary! She will ever be remembered as "the Bloody," yet the blood clings to the skirts of the legate rather than to hers. To him, and to her Spaniard husband, the infamous Don Philip, we must trace the martyrdoms; they reek of Alva's spirit, and of Torquemada's. Vain is the attempt to balance them by Calvin's cruelty to Servetus,a holocaust by a kid! Widely different were the dynastic barbarities of Henry and Elizabeth; the sufferers under the Queen were traitors and assassins, who would have made a St. Bartholomew's massacre in England if they could. Hundreds perished in Mary's reign for offences technically political; but over and above these, hundreds of her victims. were martyrs. We except the saintliest of them all, that lovely child of seventeen, the charming, the brilliant Lady Jane. Innocent and holy, she died for treason, not hers but her father's. The martyrs were "five bishops, twenty-one divines, eight gentlemen, eighty-four skilled artisans, one hundred husbandmen, and twenty-six women." Not a Calvinist in the world but blushes when Servetus is mentioned, not a Puritan but avenges the Quakers, not an Anglican who does not abhor the cruelties of Elizabeth; but Rome glories in the rivers of blood with which she has flooded the

1 See Note D"".

nations. She has painted the Paris massacre at the very doors of her pontiff's private chapel as a triumph of the Church; she sung Te Deums and struck medals for the slaughter of the Huguenots. Rome never repents.

39. THE MARTYRS.

Thank God, since he willed it so, that the Anglican restorers died not in their beds, but, like Polycarp, at the stake! Five bishops sealed their witness with their blood, and breathed out their spirits confessing Truth in the flames. To them we owe, under God, all our blessings of freedom in the state, not less than in religion. We are free to breathe, and speak, and write, and cherish our homes, and worship God amid luxuries of devotion, because they counted not their lives dear to them. Not without faults and frailties; they themselves had persecuted perhaps; but in times of unparalleled trial they came to a triumphant end. When they advised others to fly for their lives, they heroically stood by the ship. I should as soon think of reproaching St. Peter for his fall, as Cranmer for his momentary fright. How memorable his confession in St. Mary's! how unflinching the hand he laid upon the flames in the High Street of Oxford! There honest Hugh Latimer, with the faithful Ridley, had lighted the candle that shall never cease to illuminate our race. How gloriously they preached Christ out of their pulpit of fagots! Those sermons were eloquent beyond rhetoric: they shall never cease to thrill the hearts of Christian men, good and true like them. Nor let poor Hooper be

forgotten, a doubting Didymus in some lesser things, but a true confessor at the last, and a hero, confessing Christ in the fire amid his agonizing and praying flock at Gloucester. Much more may we praise the intrepid Ferrar at Caermarthen. Wales had historic claims to this glory, and the Romanized bishop that burned him was the namesake of Pelagius, her only historic shame. But to Ridley, so far as man can judge, belongs the more graceful palm and the more starry crown. To this great spirit we owe what was best and deepest in the fruits of Cranmer's learning. He restored the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, the doctrine of Ratramn, and the ancient doctrine of the Anglican Church, as testified in the Saxon homily of Ælfric. That doctrine is the corner-stone of liturgic science, and qualifies all worship. Hence, to this profound divine and holy martyr I ascribe more than to any other our incomparable Book of Common Prayer, the first book of Edward the Sixth, so called, reproduced in our American Liturgy. Who can estimate its value? It came forth with the Bishops' Bible, - next to the Bible the greatest boon to our race. In these gifts the Restoration was already complete, in all that was of its essence. The Marian martyrs sealed it with their blood. Like a precious coffer of gold, subjected to the furnace to purify the last remnant of its dross, the Church of Linus and of Gladys,1 of Alcuin and of Alfred, came forth from the fiery heat restored to its virgin beauty, a "vessel of honour, fit for the Master's use."

1 See Note E"".