Lutheran movement in england during the reigns of henry VIII. And edward VI

CHAPTER V. PROGRESS OF THE WAR FOR THE FAITH IN ENGLAND.

Conjectures as to the cause of Anne Boleyn’s fall. Her sympathy with the Reformation. Cranmer’s Grief. Melanchthon’s Indignation. Melanchthon warned by Barnes not to visit England. Antagonistic Elements in the English Church. Taverner’s English Augsburg Confession and Apology. Convocation of Canterbury. Sensation caused by Latimer’s Sermon. The Sides drawn. The Sixty-Seven Points. The Debates. Alexander Alesius, and his Speech. Foxe’s Tribute to German Lutheranism.

It is not improbable that the fate of Anne Boleyn was sealed by Henry’s failure to gain for his second marriage the endorsement of the Wittenberg faculty. We have already noted how closely connected she was with Cranmer, the months which he had spent in her father’s house, and the effect of his visit. We have also seen that she was a diligent reader of Evangelical books, surreptitiously introduced from the Continent, as the discovery of her copy of Tyndale’s “Obedience of a Christian Man,” and its influence upon Henry, prove. She had generously maintained a number of scholars at the Universities; and all of them, among whom was Heath, were during her life-time earnest champions of the Reformation. One of these scholars was especially active in circulating the works of Luther and Melanchthon. Strype gives a letter in which she intercedes for a merchant in trouble for circulating the New Testament: “Anne the queen, trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well. And whereas you be credibly enformed, that the bearer hereof, Rychard Herman, merchant and citizen of Antwerp, in Brabant, was, in the time of the late Lord Cardinal, put and expelled from [[@Page:75]]his freedom and fellowship of, and in the English House there, for nothing else, as he affirmeth, but only for that, that he did both with his goods and policy, to his great hurt and hindrance in this world, help to the setting forth of the New Testament in English; we therefore desire, and instantly pray you with all speed and favor convenient, ye woll cause this good and honest merchant, being my lord’s true, faithful and loving subject, to be restored to his pristin freedom, liberty and fellowship aforesaid.”¹⁰² “The Romanists reckoned her (and that truly enough) a great instrument in putting the King forward to what he had done in reforming religion. Pole, in a letter to the King, written within two months after her death, takes leave to call her the King’s domestic evil, which God, as he said, had rid him of; and that she was thought to be the cause of all his evils.”¹⁰³

With such evidence, it is not difficult to see how Cranmer could say: “I never had better opinion in woman than I had in her. … Next unto your grace, I was most bound unto her of all creatures living. … I loved her not a little for the love I judged her to bear towards God and his Gospel.”¹⁰⁴

Although her writings have no very high authority, it is, nevertheless, interesting to notice that Miss Benger in her “Memoirs of Anne Boleyn,” also suggests the failure of the Wittenberg negotiations as one of the causes of the Queen’s downfall. “Drs. Fox and Hethe were sent to Germany, on a mission to the Lutheran divines, with whom many conferences took place, of which the conclusion was little satisfactory to the pride or prejudices of Henry, since even Anne’s popularity could not entice them to acknowledge the legality of his divorce, and neither arguments nor promises atoned for his rejection of the Confession of Augsburg. It is, however, more than probable, these difficulties might have been obviated in a subsequent negotiation, but for the influence of Gardiner, who was, at the same [[@Page:76]]time, employed on an embassy to France, which afforded him facilities for counteracting the united efforts of Hethe and Melanchthon, and rendering the whole plan abortive. The unprosperous issue of the negotiation, was a severe disappointment to Anne.”¹⁰⁵

The death of Queen Catherine, January 6th, 1536, had introduced a new situation. As his marriage to Anne Boleyn was regarded illegal, not only by the Pope, but also by the Lutherans, the opportunity was now offered, if he could in some way rid himself of her, to contract a matrimonial alliance which would be undisputed by all. Both Pope and Emperor might thus be reconciled, and an unquestioned succession be still obtained. Besides, the King’s dignity had been offended by a just reproof from his queen; and his superstitions had been quickened, as in the former marriage, by the birth of only princesses. These various motives combined to induce him to find some ground, if possible, for a capital charge. The Queen, who, unconscious of the processes already begun against her, had sat by his side at the tournament at Greenwich, May 1st, dies eighteen days later on the scaffold. It was a severe blow to Cranmer. “Do you know what is to happen to-day?” the Primate asked Melanchthon’s pupil, Alexander Alesius, who was tarrying with him. “No,” said Alesius; “since the Queen’s imprisonment, I have not left my room.” “She who has been the Queen of England on earth,” said Cranmer, his eyes raised to heaven, and his face wet with tears, “will this day be a Queen in heaven.” The Wittenberg theologians, notwithstanding their position concerning the divorce, were so greatly shocked that they felt for the time as though all further negotiations with Henry must end. Melanchthon writes to Camerarius, June 9th: “I am altogether freed from anxiety about a journey to England. Since such tragic calamities have occurred there, a great change of plans has followed. The late Queen, accused rather than convicted of adultery, has suffered the extreme penalty. How astonishing the [[@Page:77]]charges, how they declare to all men God’s wrath, into what calamities at this time do even the most powerful fall from the highest eminence! When I think of these things, I maintain that all our troubles and dangers should be borne with the greater patience.”¹⁰⁶ And in a letter to Agricola: “How horribly does this calamity disgrace the king! Such is the evil which the divorce has brought him!”¹⁰⁷ To Justus Jonas also he writes that Dr. Barnes has written to him not to undertake the voyage to Britain.¹⁰⁸

On the same day on which Melanchthon wrote these letters, the Convocation met in England, at which the first Confession of the English Church was framed. This is a matter of such importance, that it will aid us to glance first at the course of ecclesiastical affairs in England, since the Act of Supremacy. Every record of those days bears the marks of confusion. “The Old” and “the New Learning,” both had their warm adherents. There were those urgent for a thorough reform of religion, prominent among whom were both Cranmer and Crumwell. There were others to whom it seemed as though even the Wittenberg Reformers had not proceeded far enough. Without any fixed formulary by which to guide them, they passed by various gradations to Zwinglianism and even Anabaptism, although numbering among their adherents no names of influence. The zeal of Latimer, however, even then seems to be beginning to carry him beyond the moderation of the Lutheran Reformation. Emissaries of the Pope were at hand, ready to excite the people against any innovations which might be proposed. Still others vigorously defended the Supremacy of the King, and assailed the Pope, while opposing to the very death any change of doctrine. Their ideal of the English Church was simply the Mediæval Church minus the Pope. Their zeal for Roman orthodoxy was made a sufficient answer to the reproach of disloyalty from the successor of [[@Page:78]]St. Peter. The Evangelical element had favored the divorce simply because in it they found an irreparable breach with the Papacy. These various elements had necessarily to come into conflict. Martyrs had fallen, like Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher, because they were faithful to the Pope; and John Fryth, soon to be followed by Francis Lambert, because of ultra-Protestantism.

BISHOP GARDINER.

As in all periods of confusion, there were leaders that successively rose and fell, now gained their point, and then had to submit to defeat; and, as their fortunes had vicissitudes, so also the policy of the government veered now to the one side, and then to the other. The negotiations and deliberations that are now to occur cannot be appreciated without some estimate of the character and influence of Stephen Gardiner. Three young men had grown up together and been trained for their future work in the household of Cardinal Wolsey, viz., Thomas More, Thomas Crumwell and Stephen Gardiner. The latter had proved an apt pupil of his great master, and become a veritable second Wolsey, only of greater acuteness and more obstinate will. The Cardinal was proud to call him “mei dimidium,” “half of my very self.” Henry though distrusting him soon learned to use him. The young secretary was busy plotting with foreign cardinals for Wolsey’s elevation to the Papacy, and at the same time carrying on a correspondence for the king on other matters, which was carefully concealed from the Cardinal’s knowledge. With Fox, he had been active in effecting the divorce; with Fox, he had plead Henry’s cause before the Pope in 1528; with Fox, he had brought Cranmer to the front, in order by his learning to support the king; with Fox, he had shared in the honors of the victory of Cambridge. But he never forgave Cranmer for having been preferred to him as Archbishop of Canterbury. As Bishop of Winchester, as Secretary of State, as Ambassador to France, as Lord Chancellor, he henceforth had but one purpose, and that was to prevent any change within the English Church beyond what had already been effected by the transfer [[@Page:79]]of the Supreme Headship to the King. “He deemed the work of reformation complete,” says Archdeacon Hardwick, “when the encroachments of the foreign pontiff had been successfully resisted.”¹⁰⁹ No life was so precious but that it must be sacrificed rather than be allowed to influence any inner change. Shakespeare did not err when he put into his mouth the words:

“It will ne er be well,

Till Cranmer, Crumwell, her two hands and she¹¹⁰

Sleep in their graves.”

“He was vindictive, ruthless, treacherous,” says Froude, “of clear eye, and hard heart.”¹¹¹ Such a discriminating jurist as Lord Campbell in his “Lives of the Lord Chancellors,”¹¹² characterizes him thus: “Of original genius, of powerful intellect, of independent mind, at the same time, unfortunately, of narrow prejudices.” “He was always a determined enemy of the general Lutheran doctrines; but for a while he made his creed so far coincide with his interests, as to believe that the Anglican Church, rigidly maintaining all its ancient doctrines; might be severed from the spiritual dominion of the Pope.” It was only “for a while;” as on the accession of Mary, he had no difficulty whatever in utterly ignoring all that he had written concerning Henry’s true suppremacy, and in not only returning to servile obedience to the Pope, but also in wielding his power as “a man of many wiles,” to suppress all other authority. A true Papist at heart through the whole period, and the type of a large class who still boast of the independence of the English Church, and pride themselves in having nothing in common with Protestantism! To such persons, the Lutheran Reformation is still a great offence, and all traces of connection with it must be thoroughly eradicated!

Gardiner had not been inactive while Fox and his associates [[@Page:80]]were conferring with the theologians at Wittenberg, but from France, where he was watching the course of Francis, and where he had heard of the proposition of a union on the basis of the Augsburg Confession and the Apology, “unless some things be changed by common consent,” he urges Henry, not to entertain such proposition, as “the granting of this article would bind the King to the sense of the Church of Germany, and this would be under an obligation, not to make use of the permissions of revelation.”¹¹³

The great significance of Gardiner, however, becomes prominent in the series of deliberations we are about considering.

THE ENGLISH AUGSBURG CONFESSION.

Cranmer and Crumwell knew well the character of the conflict before them, and made preparations accordingly. We have no record of the precise circumstances which determined the publication in 1536, of Taverner’s translation of the Augsburg Confession and Apology, recently brought to the attention of the Church by the scholarly researches of the late Dr. B. M. Schmucker. But when in addition to the constant references to these confessions in the negotiations between the English and the German theologians, and the peremptory ultimatum of the Elector on the withdrawal of the English ambassadors, that only on such basis could any agreement in the future be hoped for, we read the speech of Bishop Fox, in the convention hereafter to be noticed, in which he glows with enthusiasm over what the German theologians are doing, and trace the influence of especially the Apology on the English Ten Articles of 1536, there seems little doubt that it appeared prior to the Convocation. Its publication afterwards would not have been opportune, nor likely to have met the approval of the government, in view of the many Romish errors still endorsed with emphasis in the same Janus-faced “Articles,” which nevertheless the Apology most severely arraigns and refutes. But, that it was not only for the deliberations of theologians and princes, that this book was published, its very [[@Page:81]]preface shows. Richard Taverner, who even as a youth at Oxford, had been persecuted for his sympathy with evangelical doctrine, had in view a still greater range of influence, and hoped by the use of the name of Crumwell to enlist the interest of a wide circle of English readers. “To the end,” he says, “that the people, for whose sakes this book was commanded to be translated, may the more greedily devour the same,” etc. As this translation of the Augsburg Confession has so recently been reprinted and republished (Philadelphia, 1888), further comment upon it here is needless.

THE CONVOCATION AT CANTERBURY.

We come now to the formulation of the first Confession of the English Church, in the Southern Convocation which began its sessions in St. Paul’s, London, June 9th, 1536.¹¹⁴ On that day, Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, by the appointment of Cranmer preached the opening sermon. Latimer, as a youth at Cambridge, had distinguished himself by his zeal against Lutheranism, and had taken as the theme for his inaugural discourse, when in 1524 he received the degree of B. D., an “Examination of the Theological Opinions of Melanchthon,” in which the Praeceptor Germaniae was severely criticised. Recognized on this occasion by Bilney as a frank, able and earnest novice, whose chief error was his ignorance of the subject which he handled; a private interview soon put him on the track, which brought him to the lasting esteem of Protestantism, as an eccentric, but godly, fearless, and eloquent champion of the faith which he once assailed. Latimer did nothing by halves. His opening sermon, which seems to have continued through two sessions, was a most scathing denunciation of the great body of his audience for their indifference to a thorough purging of the Church of England, from Pontifical abuses, and while admirable as exhibiting the progress which the great preacher had made, was not calculated to prepare the minds of his hearers for a calm and [[@Page:82]]impartial consideration of the great questions before them.

“The mass,” says Froude, “had been sung. The roll of the organ had died away. It was the time for the sermon, and Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, rose into the pulpit. Nine-tenths of all those eyes which were then fixed on him, would have glistened with delight, could they have looked instead upon his burning.” His text was “The Unjust Steward.” A few of his sentences which fully justify Ranke’s remark, that “Latimer opened the war in a fierce sermon,” may serve as a sample: “What have ye done these seven years or more? What one thing that the people of England hath been the better of an hair? Ye have oft sat in consultation, but what one thing is put forth, whereby Christ is more glorified or else Christ made more holy? Then, after enumerating abuses: “Lift up your heads, brethren; and see what things are to be reformed in the Church of England. Is it so hard for you to see the many abuses in the clergy, the many in the laity; abuses in the court of arches, abuses in the consistorial courts of bishops; in holidays , in images and pictures, and relics, and pilgrimages; in religious rites, in masses, etc.¹¹⁵

“The sermon,” continues Froude,¹¹⁶ “has reached us, but the audience, the five hundred fierce, vindictive men, who suffered under the preachers irony what they thought of it; with what feelings on that summer day the heated crowd scattered out of the cathedral, dispersing to their dinners among the taverns in Fleet Street and Cheapside, all this is gone, gone without a sound. … Not often perhaps has an assembly collected where there was such heat of passion, such malignity of hatred.”

Crumwell took the precaution of himself presiding over the House of Bishops, as vicegerent of the King. Though two Archbishops were present, they were obliged to yield to a layman; and when his duties in parliament required his absence, he sent another layman, Dr. William Peter, to temporarily fill his place. [[@Page:83]]The two sides were clearly drawn. There seems to be no difference in the classification that has made:

Protestants, For the Reformation: Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury; Thomas Goodrich, Bishop of Ely; Nicholas Shaxton, Bishop of Sarum; Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester; Edward Fox, Bishop of Hereford; John Hilssey, Bishop of Rochester; William Barlow, Bishop of St. David’s.

Hierarchists, Against the Reformation: Edward Lee, Archbishop of York; John Stokesley, Bishop of London; Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham; Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester; Robert Sherborne, Bishop of Chichester; Richard Nyx, Bishop of Norwich; John Kite, Bishop of Carlisle.

THE SIXTY-SEVEN POINTS.

While the Upper House, of the Convocation was thus about equally divided, in the Lower House, the hierarchists were largely in the majority. On June 23d, the Lower House accordingly sends the bishops a catalogue of erroneous doctrines, which were publicly preached in the realm, and ironically declares, that they are “worthy special reformation.” They comprise sixty-seven items, which are compared by old Thomas Fuller¹¹⁷ to “Jeremy’s basket of figs; those that are good, exceeding good, those that are bad, exceeding bad, Jer. 24: 3.” It is a strange mixture of truly evangelical statements, with exaggerations and fanatical extravagances, of which some are perversions that are clearly traceable, and others can be explained by the well-known law concerning the relation between extremes. Wherever taught they were the penalty necessarily to be expected where the attempt is made to suppress the true conservatism of evangelical teaching. We have found many of the specifications presenting statements either directly given in the Augsburg Confession and Apology, or else such as have been twisted by sinister interpretation.

The first charge that the sacrament of the altar is not to be esteemed, is only a perversion of what those confessions teach [[@Page:84]]concerning the Romish Mass. The second concerning Extreme Unction correctly states what is taught in the Apology. The third, that priests have no more authority than laity to administer the Lord’s Supper is a perversion of what may be found in the [[Apology, Article XXII >> BookOfConcord:AP:22]]. The fourth, concerning Confirmation is probably suggested by the Apology’s treatment of the subject. The sixth, concerning Anti-Christ and the withholding of the cup is correct (Apology, pp. 280, 244). The seventh is the substance of Art. XXIV in both [[Confession >> BookOfConcord:AC:II:24]] and [[Apology >> BookOfConcord:AP:24]]. The eighth is especially interesting in its connection. “It is preached and taught that the church which is commonly taken for the church is the old synagogue.”

Now compare the [[Apology, page 164: 14 >> BookOfConcord:AP:8, 14]]: “What diference will there be between the people of the Law and the Church, if the Church be an outward polity?” The paragraph continues: “And that the church is the congregation of good men only.” With this, compare the Augsburg Confession in Taverner’s translation: “The church is a congregation of holy persons.” The ninth item, concerning the Litany, is only a misrepresentation of what is taught in [[Art. XXI >> BookOfConcord:AC:I:21]] concerning the Invocation of Saints. The tenth, “that man hath no free will” at once suggests [[Article XVIII >> BookOfConcord:AC:I:18]]. The eleventh seems at first sight to be an Anabaptistic or Lollard extravagance: “That God never gave grace nor knowledge of Holy Scripture to any great estate or rich man;” yet it is easily explained by what the confessions, in treating of the Freedom of the Will, declare concerning the impotence of those in the highest station, especially the learned of this world without the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit, to attain a knowledge of divine things; the standard of these critics, with respect to eminent position, being that of wealth, instead of learning. In the twelfth, “that all religions and professions are clean contrary to Christ’s religion” we find a distortion and misapplication of [[Art. XXVII >> BookOfConcord:AC:II:27]] “On Monastic Vows.” The history of the controversies concerning the Lutheran confessions in this country will supply many examples of [[@Page:85]]perversions and misinterpretations no less forced and absurd, Were it necessary we might in the same way continue the examination of the entire list, and though we could not trace all, yet we could find the majority either incorrectly stating or misinterpreting what is taught in the Confession and Apology. This catalogue of alleged errors begins with the sacraments, and first, devotes to them seven paragraphs, that had doubtless been the first, and we may even say, the main, subjects of heated and prolonged debate in the Upper House; and nearly two weeks of the session had passed before this paper from the Lower House appears.

DEBATES AMONG THE BISHOPS.

“O! what tugging was there betwixt those opposite sides,”¹¹⁸ writes one in the next century. Three speeches on the Protestant side are especially noticeable. One is that of Cranmer, in which he urges the consideration of “the weighty controversies,” which he defines as not concerned about “ceremonies or light things,” but such questions as the following: “The difference between the Law and the Gospel, how to receive the forgiveness of sins, the manner to comfort doubtful and wavering consciences, the true use of the sacraments, justification by faith, and not by any ex opere operato virtue of the sacraments, what are truly good works, whether human traditions be binding, whether confirmation, ordination, etc., should be called sacraments.”¹¹⁹ If he had intended to urge the adoption of the Apology how could he have introduced the subject better, or have presented with more correctness an outline of the scope of its matchless discussions?

Another speech was that of a Lutheran scholar, whom Melanchthon had sent from Wittenberg to Crumwell in August, 1535, as the bearer of the presentation copy of his Loci to the king, with the endorsement that “he was a man of such learning, honor and energy that he could carry no recommendation [[@Page:86]]higher than his own virtue.” Alexander Alesius (Allan), born in Edinburgh, and Canon of St. Andrew’s had left his country because of his faith in 1532, studied at Wittenberg, was the confidential friend of Melanchthon, and after 1540 until his death in 1565, Professor in the University of Leipzig. Crumwell introduced him before the bishops to argue the question of the number of the sacraments, which he did with great vigor and learning, but his presence provoked the bishops, so that Cranmer, on the ground that his life was imperilled, prevailed on him not to return the day after he had begun his argument. Alesius himself narrates the occurrence in a document, part of which is published in Ellis Original Records.¹²⁰ The date 1537 there given, has led some to infer that he narrates the circumstances of another conference; but the error is, as most writers maintain, most probably in the year stated. His argument began:

“Right honorable and noble lord, and you most reverend fathers and prelates of the church, although I come unprepared unto this disputation, yet trusting in the aid of Christ, which promiseth to give mouth and wisdom unto us, when we be required of our faith, I will utter my sentence and judgment of this disputation. And I think that my lord archbishop hath given you a profitable exhortation that ye should first agree of the signification of a sacrament: Whether ye will call a sacrament a ceremony institute of Christ in the Gospel to signify a special or a singular virtue of the Gospel, or whether ye mean that every ceremony generally which may be a token or signification of an holy thing, to be a sacrament. For after the latter signification I will not stick to grant that there be seven sacraments and more too, if ye will.”¹²¹ When Alesius was proceeding to prove this “not only from Scripture, but by the old doctors and by the school writers also,” Bishop Fox interrupted him: “Brother Alexander, contend not much about the mind and sayings of the doctors and school writers, for ye know that they in many [[@Page:87]]places do differ among themselves, and that they are contrary to themselves in almost every article. And there is no hope of any concord if we must lean to their judgment in matters of controversy.”

The speech of Fox, Bishop of Hereford, who only three months before had been conferring with Luther and Melanchthon at Wittenberg, shows how he had been influenced by what he had seen and heard:

“Think not that we can by any sophistical subtleties steal out of the world again the light which every one doth see. Christ hath so lightened the world at this time that the light of the Gospel hath put to flight all misty darkness, and it will shortly have the higher hand of all clouds, though we resist in vain never so much. The lay people do know the Holy Scripture better than many of us. And the Germans have made the text of the Bible so plain and easy by the Hebrew and the Greek tongue that now many things may be better understood without any glosses at all than by all the commentaries of the Doctors. And moreover they have so opened their controversies by their writings that women and children may wonder at the blindness and falsehood that hath been hitherto. There is nothing so feeble and weak, so that it be true, but it shall find place and be able to stand against all falsehood. Truth is the daughter of time, and time is the mother of truth: and whatsoever is besieged of truth cannot long continue; and upon whose side truth doth stand, that ought not to be thought transitory as that it will ever fall. All things consist not in painted eloquence and strength of authority; for the truth is of so great power that it could neither be resisted with words, nor be overcome with any strength, but after she hath hidden herself long, at last she putteth up her head and appeareth.

It is also worthy of note that Alesius in the account above referred to, reports also: “The right noble Lord Crumwell did defend the pure doctrine of the Gospel hard.” [[@Page:88]]