strong delusion sent amongst us may prevail to her overthrow, and to the eventual discomfiture (as they would find too late to their cost) of many who have thoughtlessly and ungratefully lifted up their heel against her! CHAPTER XI. HOOPER.PURITANS.-EXPECTATIONS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS.-EDWARD'S DEATH.-LADY JANE GREY. BUT though the leading Reformers were men of moderation, there was a party now growing up in the Church of another temper, and a more rigid mould. Hooper, the type of it at that time, had resided for some years amongst the foreign Protestants of Germany and Switzerland, where the promulgation of the Interim, a half measure, uniting something of Popish forms with something of Protestant principles, had put men upon considering the question concerning the use of things indifferent. He took the side of the more rigorous casuists; and, accordingly, when the bishopric of Gloucester was offered him, (for he was one of the most sharp and searching preachers of his day, and of a conscience above fear or favour, sometimes, perhaps, above reason too,) he alleged certain scruples, in which he was seconded by John à Lasco, and the churches of the strangers in England, chiefly touching the episcopal habits, which then consisted, besides the rochet of white linen as still worn, of a chimere or robe, to which the lawn sleeves are attached, of scarlet silk. The latter gorgeous article of dress, which was not superseded by the black satin at present worn, till the reign of Elizabeth, seems to have been the chief offence to Hooper, who accordingly for a while declined the mitre. Here was the beginning of those troubles which, however respectable in their origin, were soon destined to make havoc of the Church's peace; and Hooper is one of the few bishops (for a bishop he eventually became) on whom the Puritans of every age, not excepting even Neal himself, have looked with an eye of favour. It seems a strange thing to us, that men should have been ever found ready to make shipwreck of charity, and to risk the Reformation altogether (for the Roman Catholics were on the alert to profit by the divisions) upon matters so unimportant in themselves as the colour or material of a coat; or that such precisians should have been met with as expected, and required the actual warrant of Scripture for every trivial matter which they did throughout the day, to the utter extinction of Christian liberty: yet the number of such persons grew and prevailed; and though Hooker in his great work, now but little read, because to our apprehensions so large a portion of it is occupied in fighting with shadows, no shadows however then, did his best, as did Sanderson his most learned contemporary 2, to stave off the crisis; it came with the rebellion nevertheless, when a morbid conscience gave 1 Warburton imagines that there was a political feeling coupled with this scruple. Such a principle, pursued through its necessary deductions, leading to a reformation of the Civil government on Jewish ideas. Alliance of Church and State, book i. sect. 4. note. 2 See his two admirable Sermons, xi. and xii. ad Aulam, on 1 Cor. x. 23. "All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient; all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.' CRANMER NOT A PURITAN. 237 place, as it often does, to fanaticism or hypocrisy, and the substantial fruits of the Spirit were lost in real or pretended paroxysms. Surely the kingdom of God is not meat and drink. St. Paul in all his epistles deals boldly with such beggarly elements; nor does the example of our Lord himself sanction scruples merely fastidious. He did not listen to the accusations against his disciples that they had plucked the ears of corn on the Sabbath day, or that they had eaten with unwashen hands; and it is remarkable that, though according to the strict letter of the Levitical law, the Passover was to be partaken of with loins girded, and shoes on the feet, and a staff in the hand, and in haste, Jesus appears to have acquiesced in a custom long established, and to have sat down with his disciples, and to have conversed with them at his leisure, one of them leaning upon his bosom. An attempt has been made by some to claim Cranmer as belonging to the same party in his heart, howbeit restrained by force of circumstances from fully declaring himself. They would persuade us that he was prepared to have gone much further in his Book of Common Prayer, (such, say they, was the report amongst the English exiles at Frankfort 1,) but that a wicked clergy and convocation held his hand; and that more was meant than met the ear, even when under the cruel mockery of his accusers, as they stripped him of the canvass pontificals in which they had arrayed him, he observed, "that it needed not; for he had done with that gear long Strype's Cranmer, p. 266. before." 1 That he set no greater store by the innocent trappings of his office than was due to them from a man of sense and piety may be well believed; he had already said as much: "If the bishops of this realm," he remarks in a letter to Cromwell, "pass no more of their names, styles, and titles, than I do of mine, the King's Highness shall soon order the matter betwixt us. ... For I pray God never to be merciful to me at the general judgment if I perceive in my heart that I set more by any title, name, or style, that I write, than I do by the paring of an apple, further than it shall be to the setting forth of God's word and will." Let it, however, be remembered, that these words were written by Cranmer in vindication of himself against the idle but malicious charge of Gardiner, that by assuming the title of "Primate of all England" he had trenched upon the King's supremacy; and that the period at which they were written was the year 1535, when as yet the Puritan question had not been stirred. 2 But though the general character of the Archbishop's mind, which was averse from extremes of every kind, is enough to oppose to any claim of this description, there are, besides, some distinct particulars in his history, which argue clearly enough that if he did not forsee the danger of the Puritan principle, he at least had no inclination to lend himself to its advancement. To Hooper's imaginations he did not give place, no not for an hour, resolutely opposing even the King's letter of recommendation 1 Strype's Cranmer, p. 375. |