EDITED BY THE REV. HERMAN HOOKER, M. A., AUTHOR OF THE “PORTION OF THE SOUL,” &C. VOL. VI. LABORE RELUCENS. PHILADELPHIA: WILLIAM MARSHALL AND COMPANY; MDCCCXXXVII. SKETCH OF THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND . BY THE REV. J. J. BLUNT, FELLOW OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. With an Introductory Letter, TO THE EDITOR, BY GEORGE WASHINGTON DOANE, D. D., BISHOP OF NEW JERSEY. PAUL’S CROSS. PHILADELPHIA: WILLIAM MARSHALL & CO. 1837. “They that goe downe to the sea in ships, and occupie by

The Reformation is one of the most remarkable events in our history, whether considered in relation to politics or religion; for its influence was most powerful upon both. My own reading, profession, and taste have led me to regard it in the latter rather than in the former light; and therefore, brief as the following sketch is, it will not be found of the nature of an abridgment of larger histories of the Reformation which have contemplated it in all its many bearings, but a continuous, though

St. Mary’s Parsonage, Conversion of St. Paul, 1837. My Dear Brother: When you proposed to me that I should write an Introduction to Mr. Blunt’s “Sketch of the Reformation in England,” included, at my suggestion, in your “Library of Christian Knowledge,” I saw an admirable opportunity to invite attention to that great crisis of the Christian world; and I consented. As I meditated on the subject, it deepened in interest, and rose in elevation, and increased in magnitude, till it became absorbing a

BRITISH AND ANGLO-SAXON CHURCHES.—INTERCOURSE WITH ROME.—EARLY CORRUPTIONS. The Reformation is not to be regarded as a great and sudden event which took the nation by surprise. It was merely the crisis to which things had been tending for some centuries; and if the fire did at last run over the country with wonderful rapidity, it was because the trees were all dry. It is a mistake to suppose that whilst the Roman catholic religion prevailed all was unity. True it is, that the elements of discont

DIVISIONS AMONGST ECCLESIASTICS.—THE REGULAR AND SECULAR CLERGY.—THE POPE FAVOURS THE FORMER.—EXEMPTIONS FROM EPISCOPAL JURISDICTION.—HABITS OF THE FRIARS. In tracing the progress of corruption in the English church and the causes of it, we have hitherto had a trustworthy guide in the venerable Bede; henceforward, to the time of the Normans, there is much in our history that is dark, intricate, and uncertain. [64] Many early church records have perished in the fires which on different occasions

PROGRESS OF GRIEVANCES UNDER THE NORMAN PRINCES.—PAPAL INTERFERENCE.—LEGATES.—COLLISION OF ROMAN AND ENGLISH FORMS OF LAW.—INCONVENIENCES ATTENDING IT. It has been already observed that the distance of England from Italy, which had helped to deliver our borders from the political tyranny of imperial Rome, served also to protect the liberties of our church from the spiritual thraldom of papal Rome. The inhabitants of this island, entirely cut off from the rest of the world, were happily abandoned

MONASTERIES.—THEIR USURPATION OF THE RIGHTS OF THE CLERGY.—IMPROPRIATIONS.—EVILS OF THE SYSTEM. With the causes already enumerated as those which worked the downfall of the Roman Catholic church, there conspired the ignorance and immoral lives of the clergy. A system of celibacy upon compulsion was sure to produce a system of profligacy. Yet the disgusting catalogue of offences alleged against the regulars, by the visiters of the monasteries, ought, perhaps, to be received with some caution. The

EARLY REFORMERS.—WALDENSES.—WICKLIFFE.—LOLLARDS. Meanwhile a little leaven was at work, which served still to keep a better faith alive; a little salt of the earth which prevented the great carcase of human nature from offending the nostrils of its Creator. The Almighty has been ever wont to make such provision for the continuance of sound doctrine. Whilst all flesh was corrupting its way, still a household or two were left to keep his name from perishing, and to rally the true religion again—an

LUTHER.—ERASMUS.—SIR T. MORE.—NEW TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE.—DEMAND FOR IT. Such was the condition of England in the fifteenth century: the minds of men generally alienated from the church of Rome by reason of its corruption; their religious knowledge improved, and improving daily, by the wider diffusion of the Scriptures in the mother-tongue, to which the art of printing now so effectually contributed; and a sect, neither few in numbers, nor wanting in activity or courage, in the heart of the ki

CRANMER.—THE DIVORCE.—THE SUPREMACY. We have now touched upon a few of the many elements which were secretly at work preparing England for a reformation of religion, and without some regard to which it would be impossible to account for the rapid pace at which it was consummated: let us but shut our eyes to this undercurrent of events—take our stand at the accession of Henry the Eighth—and endeavour to guess at the future; and what could seem to us more improbable, than that a reign so begun was

DISSOLUTION OF THE ABBEYS.—CHURCH PROPERTY.—IMMEDIATE CONSEQUENCES OF THE DISSOLUTION. Henry had by this time fairly passed the Rubicon. After a long pause and much anxiety for the event, he had ventured upon an act which was a declaration of war against the Pope, and he must now carry on. The strength of the Pontiff lay, as we have seen, in the monastic orders, and in the Mendicants above all. The secular clergy were better subjects, and acknowledged a less divided allegiance. But the monks wer

CROMWELL.—GARDINER.—BONNER.—THE ACT OF THE SIX ARTICLES.—SERMONS OF THOSE DAYS.—PROPOSED DISPOSAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL PROPERTY.—ARTICLES OF 1536.—THE BIBLE IN CHURCHES.—BISHOPS’ BOOK.—KING’S BOOK. The two great measures of the supremacy, and the suppression of the abbeys had been carried, but with haste and no small violence; and now came the recoil. It pertained to the king’s prerogative that the pope should be deposed, and to his exchequer that the monasteries should be despoiled; so far, theref

EDWARD VI.—ADVANCE OF THE REFORMATION.—ERASMUS’S PARAPHRASE.—HOMILIES.—CRANMER’S CATECHISM.—OFFICE OF COMMUNION.—BOOK OF COMMON-PRAYER.—TIME OF SERVICE, AND LENGTH.—PRIMER.—ARTICLES OF 1553.—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

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

MARY.—SUPPRESSION OF THE REFORMATION.—PERSECUTION OF THE REFORMERS.—FOX’S ACTS AND MONUMENTS. That God seeth not as man seeth, is a truth which he, who reads history aright, must soon be taught. Cranmer, overcome by his apprehensions for the safety of the reformed church under a Catholic queen, had acted from a principle of expediency, and placed, as far as an individual could, the Lady Jane Grey on a throne which did not belong to her. Had the event turned out as he hoped, had her seat been est

ELIZABETH.—HER ACCESSION.—HER CAUTION.—REFORMATION AGAIN TRIUMPHANT.—RETURN OF THE EXILES.—JEWEL.—INJUNCTIONS OF ELIZABETH COMPARED WITH THOSE OF EDWARD.—PROGRESS OF THE PURITANS.—THE REFORMATION NOT COMPLETED. CONCLUSION. Such was the great agony through which the Reformation was doomed to pass. But that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die, and so it proved in this instance. The reign of Mary was the grave of the cause for a short season, and that of Elizabeth was now to be its tri