of the learning, ability, and diligence, with which he applied himself to the great business of weeding out superstition, and yet preserving what he believed to be the essentials of Christianity untouched. This praise (and it is no light one) is his due; and it is our part to be thankful to that all-ruling Providence, which rendered even his passions and his vices subservient to this important end.

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CHAPTER XIII.

EDWARD VI.

EDWARD VI. was little more than nine years of age when he succeeded to the throne. The first six he had been bred up among the women, and afterwards Dr. Cox and Sir John Cheke were appointed his preceptors, . . . names well known in the history of the Reformation and of literature. Abler tutors could not have been provided; they directed his education to the best objects, and the progress of their pupil corresponded to their desires; for, with his mother's gentleness and suavity of disposition, he inherited his father's capacity, and diligence, and love of learning. At his coronation, when the three swords, for the three kingdoms, were brought to be carried before him, he observed, that there was one yet wanting, and called for the Bible: “That,” said he, "is the sword of the Spirit, and ought in all right to govern us, who use these for the people's safety, by God's appointment. Without that sword we are nothing; we can do nothing. From that we are what we are this day; we receive whatsoever it is that we at this present do assume. Under that we ought to live, to fight, to govern the people, and to perform all our affairs. From that alone we obtain all power, virtue, grace, salvation, and whatsoever we have of divine strength." Child as he was, so well had he been trained, and so excellent was his moral and intellectual nature, that he was capable of thus thinking and thus expressing himself. One, who was about his person, says of him, " If ye knew the towardness of that young Prince, your hearts would melt to hear him named: . . . the beautifullest creature that liveth under the sun; the wittiest, the most amiable, . . . and the gentlest thing of all the world." "No pen," says Fuller, "passeth by him without praising him, though none praising him to his full deserts."

His uncle, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, was appointed Governor of the King's person and Lord Protector, and forth

with created Duke of Somerset. The Reformation now proceeded without impediment; but plunder and havoc kept pace with it; for, by one of those unnatural leagues in which men, with the purest intentions, sometimes find themselves involved, the most religious members of the Church, and the veriest worldlings of the state, went hand in hand: the former, acquiescing in the evil which they could not prevent, for the sake of bringing about the good at which they aimed; the latter, promoting that good, because they made it subservient to their own selfish and rapacious ends.

Cranmer's disposition, as well as his principles, inclined him to proceed discreetly and with moderation, in the changes which were still necessary. The progress of his own mind had been slow; laying aside no received opinion, till he had thoroughly investigated the point, and ascertained, by painful and deliberate inquiry, that it rested upon no sufficient grounds of Scripture, and that the authority of the better ages was against it. It was not till the last year of King Henry's reign, that he gave up the tenet of transubstantiation. His opinion had been shaken by the arguments and allegations of some persons, who were convented before him for denying it. Frith's book confirmed the impression which had thus been made; and, finally, he became satisfied that the doctrine was as little scriptural as the term. Ridley, by the same course, came to the same conclusion; and Latimer, not long afterward, laid aside, in like manner, the last error of Popery which clung to him. These good men held the due mean, between that bigotry which allows not itself to question the grounds upon which any of its opinions are founded, and the levity which embraces new doctrines without consideration, and presently casts them off, as inconsiderately as it received them. Had the work of reform been conducted by the State as temperately as by the Church, it would have been, in all points, without reproach. But the religious and the statistic measures must not be confounded. Reformation was the aim and effect of the former; spoliation, of the latter.

The first ecclesiastical injunctions which were set forth, by the King's command, enjoined that the Clergy should, once a quarter at least, dissuade the people from pilgrimages and image

.

worship; and that images, which had been abused with pilgrimages and offerings, should be destroyed. All shrines, with their coverings, tables, candlesticks, trindills or rolls of wax, pictures, and other monuments of feigned miracles, were to be taken away and destroyed, so that no memory of them should remain in walls or windows; and the people were to be exhorted to make the like clearance in their houses. Pulpits were to be provided. The Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Commandments, were to be recited by the Priest, from the pulpit, on holy-days, when there was no sermon; and no person, who could not recite them, should be admitted to the Sacrament. No person might preach, unless he were licensed; and because of the lack of preachers, the curates were to read homilies, which should be set forth by the King's authority. A register was to be kept in every parish, for marriages, christenings, and burials. The fifth part of every benefice was to be expended on the mansion-house or chancel, till both should be in full repair; and for every hundred a year which a Clergyman possessed, in Church preferment, he should give a competent exhibition to a scholar at the University. Holy-days were to be kept holy; but it was declared lawful for the people to work upon them in time of harvest, and save that which God hath sent; scrupulosity, on such occasions, being pronounced sinful.

The people, in many places, had begun to demolish images, before these injunctions were issued: not that the majority would willingly have parted with them; but that, when a few zealots began the work of demolition, enough were ready to assist, for the pleasure of havoc, even when there was no hope of plunder. The Reformers held it unlawful to tolerate what they believed was prohibited by the second Commandment. The late King' had maintained, against Cranmer, that that prohibition related to the Jews, and not to us: and Gardiner now argued, that pictures and images were as serviceable as books, and that devotional feelings might as lawfully and effectually be excited through the eye as through the ear. The contrary opinion prevailed, because frauds and superstitions had been so gross and palpable; and thus, as has too frequently happened, the use of

Strype's Cranmer, p. 136.

what in itself might be good, was forbidden, because of the abuses to which it had given occasion.

The very circumstance of Henry's having ordered in his will perpetual masses for his soul, led to an inquiry whether such masses were not vain and superstitious, and therefore unlawful. The Romanists insisted that all things should be maintained in the state wherein the late King had left them, (he having been not only the most learned Prince in the world, but the most learned divine also,)... at least till the present Sovereign should be of age. On the other hand, it was asserted, that at the time of his death he had been preparing to change the Mass into a Communion, and that a matter, wherein the salvation of souls was concerned, ought not to be delayed. The Protestants were now a majority in the Government. An Act was passed, ordering that the Sacrament should be administered in both kinds, conformably to our Saviour's institution, and the custom of the Church for the first five centuries. Private masses were put down, . . . one of the most lucrative practices of the Romish Church. The same Act appointed discretionary fine and imprisonment as the punishment of those who should treat the question of the Sacrament with irreverence, either in sermons, or in ribald treatises, with which the press now began to abound, both in prose and rhyme.

There was a great difficulty in finding persons who might safely be licensed to preach: the danger was not from the Papal clergy, but from those headstrong men who thought that all vestiges of Popery ought to be removed, and that the difference between the old and the reformed Church could never be made too wide. Admonition to such people was found useless, and no other means remained of stopping seditious preaching, (for such it had become,) than by forbidding any person whatever to preach, except such as were licensed by the King, the Protector, or the Primate, under their seals, . . . the Bishops themselves being included in this prohibition. . . . But such sermons, addressing the vanity of the hearers, and encouraging their presumption, indisposed them for the homilies. They who had been thus flattered and appealed to, disrelished plain and wholesome instruction; . . . and sometimes the congregation manifested their dislike, by talking while they were read; sometime