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ther, that thus the hearts of the congregation might be enlisted in their devotions, and the lukewarmness be counteracted, which was fast alienating them from public worship, conducted, as it was, in a language of which they were ignorant, though with errors of which they were

aware.

Meanwhile, the same vigilant prelate supplied, as far as he had the opportunity, the livings in his gift with men devoted to the cause which he had at heart, and encouraged the more frequent delivery of sermons; whereby, though much violent collision of doctrine was produced amongst the preachers, still sparks of truth were elicited, and light, though not without heat, was dispersed.1

Thus stood the Reformation, when Henry, who had now done all the work which such an instrument was fit for, died, pressing in his last moments the hand of Cranmer, to whom, and to whom only, through evil report and through good. report, he had ever been faithful and true. To him he bequeathed a church which was little but a ruinous heap; its revenues dissipated, its ministers divided, its doctrines unsettled, its laws obsolete, impracticable, and unadapted to the great change it had sustained.

It remains for us to trace the re-construction of these shattered materials, to watch the wise master-builders as they pursued their difficult task to its accomplishment; and beholding the pains, the perseverance, the study, the time which it cost them, to distrust the wild suggestions of an age of crude experiment and super

1 Strype, p. 187.

THE KING'S BOOK.

195

ficial knowledge, an age which would rush in, without knowing why, upon forms and institutions which the sagest heads have grown grey in devising and perfecting; and rather listen, as far as regards our church, to the advice of the ancient, unpretending though it be—" Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna."

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MER'S CATECHISM. — OFFICE OF COMMUNION.BOOK OF COMMON-PRAYER. — TIME OF SERVICE, PRIMER. ARTICLES OF 1553.

AND LENGTH. ―

MODERATION OF THE ENGLISH REFORMERS.

THE accession of Edward, the Josiah of his country, as he was commonly called in his own day, reanimated the Reformation; and during his short reign it was that the church of England was constructed, in the main, such as we now see it. The young prince, who was brought up a protestant, was himself eminently calculated to recommend the cause. His own character, both mental and moral, was a most persuasive advocate of the system which had nurtured it. Cardan, who was called into England to prescribe for the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, then sick of a dropsy, and was introduced to the king, now in his fifteenth year, relates the particulars of a short conversation which he had with him on the subject of comets, which won the heart of the philosopher, and, like a journal which has come down to us written in his own hand', certainly argues in him a wit beyond his age. Latin he spoke, says Cardan, who seems to have conversed with him in it, as readily as himself; and in many other languages he is said to have been a pro

1 Burnet, Reform. ii. Append. 3.

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ficient, stimulated, perhaps, by an apophthegm of Roger Ascham, his sister's schoolmaster, though not his own, "that as a bird cannot soar unto heaven with one wing, so cannot a man attain unto excellence with one tongue." Indeed, to a study of tongues, we are told by a correspondent of his own, he had more applied than to any matter either of history or of policy, the holy Scriptures excepted; nevertheless, the pains which were taken to render him in all things an accomplished prince may be seen in the questions (eighty-four in number) submitted to him by the clerk of the council, probably at the desire of the Protector Somerset; and which were intended as food for his private speculations and debates with his friends. They are such as embrace nearly all those principles of government upon which he would be afterwards called to act "Whether is better for the commonwealth that the power be in the nobility or the people?" "How easily a weak prince with good order may long be maintained; and how soon a mighty prince with little disorder may be destroyed?" "What causeth an inheritor king to lose his realm ?" "Whether religion, besides the honour of God, be not also the greatest stay of civil order?" "How dangerous it is to be the author of a new matter?" - with many other problems, well worth the attention of those to whom the education of a sovereign is confided. His heart was as good as his head; and as it is with the latter that we believe, but with the former that we believe unto righteousness, so did its natural dictates

Ellis's Original Letters, ii. 187. 2d Series.

rise in arms against those more subtle principles according to which Cranmer had conscientiously persuaded himself, and endeavoured to persuade the king, that the death of Joan of Kent was a duty; and happy would it have been for the memory of that otherwise almost unspotted character, had he submitted his more mature but more sophisticated judgment to the righteous tears of this gifted boy. What he did, however, he did ignorantly; not in any carnal zeal, but after long debate, and, as he writes, in bitterness and sorrow of spirit. He did it in the temper in which Sir Matthew Hale condemned the witches of Leostoff, and suffered judgment to be executed upon them; though he represents himself most unaffectedly, and most truly, as having in general such tenderness in cases of life as almost disqualified him for the bench; and though Sir Thomas Brown, who actually wrote against vulgar errors, was in court at the time, and influenced by his voice the verdict of the jury. 2 But in this case, Cranmer seems to have thought that the honour of Christ himself, which was blasphemed, required an example to be made; and, weak and wicked as it is now allowed to be to condemn to the flames for matters of speculative opinion, which do not directly interfere with the morals of society, and therefore do not de. mand the interposition of the secular magistrate, it was the dogma of the church in which Cranmer had been born and bred; from which even yet he had not wholly emancipated himself; but

1 "Cum animi amaritudine et cordis dolore." Burnet, Reform. ii. 168.

2 Parr's Works, iv. 181.

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