i:^ a Q^ o^ .^c^ i^'^^ 
 
 OF THK 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 x> o >r ^'\. •!• X o rw av 
 
 SAMUEL AGNEW, 
 
 Of PHILADELPHIA, PA. 
 
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 P77/^i/i/cyk/ Mri^i/§^<^ 
 
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 BX 4805 .G54 1836 
 Gilly, William Stephe; 
 
 -1855. 
 Our protestant forefathers, 
 
 ' 
 
 in, 1789 
 
/J ., 
 
 ^% '\ 
 
 It 
 
OUR 
 
 PROTESTANT FOREFATHERS. 
 
 Br 
 
 WILLIAM STEPHEN GILLY, D.D. 
 prei;endar.y of durham, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "VVALDENSIAN RESEARCHES," ETC., EVCi 
 
 FlilST AMERfCAN, 
 
 FROM THE 
 TWELFTH LONDON EDITION. 
 
 NEW- YORK : 
 ROBERT CARTER, 112 C A N A L - ST R E ET. 
 
 J. W BELL, PRIXTER, 17 AKN-STREET. 
 
 MDCUCXXXVI, 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 SECTION 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The difference between Romanism and Protestant- 
 
 ism stated 5 
 
 II. The Solemn National Protests of the Sixteenth 
 
 Century were the Crisis, not the beginning of 
 the Struggle jq 
 
 III. The Abuses which hastened this Crisis 14 
 
 IV. The Holy Catholic Church, before the Corruptions 
 
 of the Roman Church produced Divisions 17 
 
 V. The First Protestants— Irenasus— The Waldenses 
 
 — The Albigenses 20 
 
 VI. The Spirit of Protestantism in Britain coeval with 
 
 the Pope's pretended Jurisdiction here 32 
 
 VII. Britain under Romish thraldom, and Wiclif the 
 
 Protestant Liberator 3g 
 
 VIII. Wiclif's Translation of Scripture and his other 
 
 Writings, and the effects produced by them 47 
 
 IX. The Lollards— Lord Cobham, and the sufferers 
 
 under the statute of burning heretics 63 
 
V CONTENTS. 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 X. Protestantism gains ■strength^ before Luther, and 
 
 advances in spite of Henry VIII 62 
 
 XL The jBible in the vernacular tongue becomes an 
 engine of wonderful power in the hands of the 
 Protestants 69 
 
 XII. Cranmer — The first authorized EngUsh Version of 
 
 the Bible, and the people's reception of it 73 
 
 XIII. The Protestant cause triumphant by virtue of its 
 
 own principles, rather than by the aid of the 
 ruhng powers 83 
 
 XIV. Anecdotes illustrative of the character, doctrines 
 
 and conduct of our Protestant luminaries — 
 Wiclif, Cranmer, Latimer,; 'Jewel, Rowland 
 Taylor, and Bernard Gilpin 91 
 
OUR PROTESTANT FOREFATHERS. 
 
 Section 1. — The difference between Romanism 
 and Protestantism, 
 
 Christians in this quarter of the world are 
 divided into two parties— the Roman Catholics 
 and the Protestants. The Roman Catholics con- 
 sent to 
 
 The Authority of the Church of Rome, 
 The Supremacy of the Pope, 
 The Intercession of the Virgin and the Saints, 
 The Worship of the Virgin Mary, 
 The Worship of Saints, 
 The Use of Images, 
 The Veneration of Relics, 
 The Power of granting Indulgences, 
 The Doctrine of Purgatory, and 
 The Doctrine of Transubstantiation. 
 1 
 
6 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 They believe also that the authority of unwrit- 
 ten traditions and of Holy Writ are equal, and 
 that there are seven sacraments which confer 
 grace. The Protestants refuse their assent to 
 these things, heheving them to be unscriptural ; 
 and they renounce all submission to the assumed 
 power of the Church of Rome. 
 
 That I may represent the faith of Romanism 
 fairly, I give the following extracts from the 
 Creed of Pope Pius IV., in the very words in 
 which they were published ten years ago in 
 defence of the Roman Catholics by Mr. Butler, 
 in his "Book of the Roman Cathohc Church ;" 
 wherein he affirms, "that this Creed is con- 
 sidered, in every part of the world, as an accu- 
 rate and explicit summary of the Roman Catho- 
 hc Faith." 
 
 " I most firmly admit and embrace apostolical 
 and ecclesiastical traditions, and all other con- 
 stitutions and observances of the Church. 
 
 " I also admit the Sacred Scriptures according 
 to the sense which the Holy Mother Church has 
 held, and does hold, to whom it belongs to judge 
 of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy 
 
FOREFATHERS. 7 
 
 Scriptures ; nor will I ever take or interpret them 
 otherwise than according- to the unanimous con- 
 sent of the Fathers. 
 
 " I profess also, that there are truly and pro- 
 perly seven sacraments of the new law, insti- 
 tuted by Jesus Christ our Lord, and for the sal- 
 vation of mankind, though all are not necessary 
 for every one ; viz. baptism, confirmation, eucha- 
 rist, penance, extreme unction, order, matrimony; 
 and they confer grace ; and of these, baptism, 
 confirmation, and order, cannot be reiterated 
 without sacrilege. 
 
 " I profesSj likewise, that in the mass is offered 
 to God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice 
 for the living and the dead ; and that in the 
 most holy sacrament of the Eucharist there is 
 truly, really, and substantially, the body and 
 blood, together with the soul and divinity of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ ; and that there is made a 
 conversion of the whole substance of the bread 
 into the body, and of the whole substance of the 
 wine into the blood, which conversion the whole 
 Catholic Church calls Transubstantiation. 
 
 *' I confess, also, that under either kind alone, 
 the whole and entire Christ, and a true Sacra- 
 ment, is received. 
 
8 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 " I constantly hold that there is a purgatory, 
 and that the souls detained therein are helped by 
 the suffrages of the faithful. Likewise, that the 
 saints reigning together with Christ are to be 
 honoured and invocated ; that they offer prayers 
 to God for us, and that their relics are to be 
 venerated. 
 
 " I most firmly assert that the images of Christ, 
 and of the Mother of God ever Virgin, and also 
 of the other saints, are to be had and retained ; 
 and that due honour and veneration are to be 
 given to them. 
 
 " I also affirm that the power of indulgences 
 was left by Christ in the Church, and that the 
 use of them is most wholesome to Christian peo- 
 ple. 
 
 "I acknowledge the Holy, Catholic, and 
 Apostolical Roman Church, the mother and 
 mistress of all Churches ; and I promise and 
 swear true obedience to the Roman Bishop, the 
 successor of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, 
 and Vicar of Christ. 
 
 "I also profess and undoubtedly receive all 
 other things delivered, defined, and declared by 
 the Sacred Canons and General Councils, and 
 
FOREFATHERS. 9 
 
 particularly by the Holy Council of Trent : and 
 likewise I also condemn, reject, and anathema- 
 tise all things contrary thereto, and all heresies 
 whatsoever condemned and anathematised by 
 the Church. 
 
 " This true Catholic Faith, out of which none 
 can be saved, which I now freely profess and 
 truly hold, I promise, vow, and swear, most con- 
 stantly to hold and profess the s^me whole and 
 entire, with God's assistance, to the end of my 
 life." 
 
 Such is the Roman Catholic's creed, in which 
 he professes to maintain the power and authority 
 and supremacy of the Pope ; the worship of the 
 Virgin Mary and saints ; the use of images, 
 relics, indulgences, and penances ; and the doc- 
 trine of purgatory, of transubstantiation, and of 
 seven sacraments. 
 
 In opposition to these tenets, we assert that 
 the doctrine of the Pope's supremacy and au- 
 thority has led to the most unreasonable assump- 
 tion, and to the most unrighteous exercise of 
 spiritual power, and to the most terrible suffer- 
 ings that man can inflict on man ; — that the in- 
 1* 
 
10 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 vocation of the Virgin Mary and of the saints, 
 and the use of images, have introduced practices 
 of idolatry which pious Roman Cathohcs them- 
 selves deprecate ; that the doctrines of indul- 
 gences, penances, and transubstantiation, have 
 been productive of superstitions, blasphemies, 
 and immoralities, which those who first invented 
 them could not have foreseen. 
 
 Section 2. — The solemn national protests of the 
 sixteenth century were the Crisis, not the begin- 
 ning of the struggle. 
 
 Solemn national protests against the Roman 
 Catholic Faith, and extensive separations from 
 the Church of Rome, took place in the sixteenth 
 century. The two principal movements, the one 
 in Germany, the other in England, occurred 
 about the same time. That in Germany is 
 dated from the year 1 530, when the confederated 
 advocates of Martin Luther's opinions signed 
 their confession of Faith at Augsburgh, and en- 
 tered into the alliance called the Union of Smal- 
 kald : that in England is usually computed from 
 the year 1534, in which Henry VIH., was de- 
 
FOREFATHERS. 1 1 
 
 clared supreme Head of the English Church ; 
 but it might be as properly assigned to the year 
 1535, when the first complete English transla- 
 tion of the Bible, the Magna Charta of our Pro- 
 testantism, the great book of appeal, was publish- 
 ed by Authority. 
 
 Now because Luther took a prominent part in 
 the religious discussion which preceded the stir 
 in Germany, and because Henry VIII. was the 
 first British king who renounced all obedience 
 to the Roman Bishop, Protestants have been in- 
 sultingly told, that their religion is new and up- 
 start ; that there was no Protestant faith before 
 Martin Luther ; and that the Reformation in 
 England owes its birth to an act of kingly caprice, 
 and not to the religious feelings of the people. 
 We deny that Popery was always the religion 
 of England before Henry VII I. 's time, and the 
 only faith known to our forefathers before the 
 sixteenth century. Thus far only is the asser- 
 tion correct, that it was the only faith which the 
 State permitted our forefathers to avow during 
 several centuries. 
 
 Protestantism, or the principle of Resistance, 
 opposed to the corruptions and usurpations of the 
 
13 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 Roman Church, is to be found so soon as that 
 Church began to depart from the simplicity of 
 the Gospel : it may be traced through different 
 periods of ecclesiastical history, until it broke 
 out in those two memorable political convul- 
 sions, which ought to be called the grand crisis, 
 and not the first struggle of the Protestant cause. 
 
 The Romanists say that the Church has al- 
 ways taught the doctrines which we disclaim ; 
 and we retort, that they are innovations, and 
 that there have always been Protestants to lift 
 up their voices against them. Humble servants 
 of Christ, one by one, declared against the er- 
 rors and domination of the Romish Pontificate, 
 long before nations agreed to disown them. 
 Small communities asserted their independence 
 before large ones threw off the Papal yoke ; and 
 we are to look for the origin of our religious sys- 
 tem, not in the decrees of princes or in acts of 
 parliament, not in political revolutions and pub- 
 lic manifestoes — but in the apostolical writings 
 and institutions, and in the studies, and contem- 
 plations, and firmness of individuals. 
 
 The object of this statement is to draw atten- 
 tion to the important fact, that there was a great 
 
FOREFATHERS. 13 
 
 religions process going on in the minds of men 
 in the private stations of hfe, many ages before 
 dominions and principahties entered on the ques- 
 tion of the Pope's supremacy, at that epoch 
 which is called the Reformation. We will grant 
 that the liberation of great part of Europe from 
 Papal usurpations and exaction, after bearing 
 the yoke for many centuries, cannot be dated 
 earlier than three hundred years back. But we 
 strenuously maintain, that a commotion had 
 been observed in England, Scotland, Ireland, 
 Germany, France, Switzerland, and even in 
 parts of Italy and Spain, — and that demands for 
 improvement, and a system of opposition to the 
 abuses and corruption of the dominant Church, 
 had long previousl}^ indicated the existence of 
 that spirit which we now call Protestantism. 
 The good and the wise, however, being gener- 
 ally the fewest in number, the early Protestants 
 were silenced by imprisonment and death, or the 
 fear of them ; or were driven into mountains 
 and retired places, where, in deprivation and in 
 steadfastness, they made the deep valley and the 
 forest resound with the praises of God. 
 
\ 4 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 Section 3. — The abuses lohich hastened the Crisis, 
 
 At length the " rapacity of the Papal see, the 
 mendacious impudence and the haiefaced im- 
 postures of the friars, the growing immorahty of 
 the whole clerical hody, and, above all, the mon- 
 strous abuse of indulgences,^^* became so intolera- 
 ble, that men who had any sense of religion 
 could bear with them no longer, and the reli- 
 gious revolution rolled on like a mighty flood 
 through all the countries of the north of Europe. 
 
 The power of granting indulgences being still 
 one cf the favourite and soul-ensnaring doctrines 
 of the Romish Church, I will digress for a mo- 
 ment to show what it had to do, as an immedi- 
 ate cause, with the great Protestant movement 
 at the time when the British and German na- 
 tions threw off the Papal chains. Pope Leo X. 
 wanted mone}^, and he " lost no time in replen- 
 ishing his empty coffers by the public sale of in- 
 
 + Dunham, 'Germanic Empire,' vol. ii. p. 319. "Any 
 change," sa3's this erudite author, " would have been better 
 than the existing state of things. God's providence was con- 
 cerned ; either a reformation must be effected, or adieu to re- 
 ligion." 
 
FOREFATHERS. 1 5 
 
 dulgences ;"* that is to say, he made use of the 
 power which his predecessors had usurped over 
 Christian churches, aud he sent abroad into all 
 kingdoms his letters and bulls, promising- pardon 
 of sins to such as would purchase the pardon 
 with money. One of the Pope's agents in this 
 nefarious traffic was a Dominican friar of the 
 name of Tetzeh The Dominican friars were 
 the founders and great supporters of that terrible 
 tribunal the Inquisition, which put to death hun- 
 dreds of thousands of victims. Tetzel went 
 forth preaching the efficacy of the indulgences 
 which he had to sell, and boasting of the num- 
 ber of souls which had been released from purga- 
 tory, and saved from hell by the purchasers of 
 them. TheJ'orms of the indulgences or pardons 
 ran thus : — \By Christ's authority, and that of 
 his apostles Peter and Paul, and of the most 
 holy Pope, granted and committed to me, I do 
 absolve thee first from all ecclesiastical censures, 
 in whatever way they have been incurred — and 
 also from all the sins, transgressions, and ex- 
 cesses, however enormous they maybe, &c. &c.'^ 
 So successful was Tetzel in this unholy mer- 
 
 * Dunham, ' Germanic Empire,' vol. iii. p. 4. 
 
16 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 diaiidise, and so blinded had the people been by 
 being kept in the darkness of Popery, that his 
 receipts were enormous ; but on one occasion his 
 wickedness produced its own punishment. " Can 
 you grant absokition for a crime which a man 
 has not yet committed, but intends to commit?" 
 asked one of his hearers. "Yes," rephed Tetzel, 
 " if the proper sum of money be paid down." 
 The man paid the amount required, and received 
 tlie form of pardon duly signed and sealed. Soon 
 afterwards Tetzel was robbed, and the robber 
 produced the indulgence : — "This," said he, "is 
 the crime I intended to commit, and here is my 
 pardon." 
 
 Other profanations, vmder the name of reli- 
 gion, went on : the wickedness which could 
 break out into such an atrocious sin as the sale 
 of indulgences stopped at nothing, until even 
 the timid and the indifferent were roused to 
 action by the increasing abominations of the 
 Romish Church ; and the Reformation, which 
 had been demanded for ages, proceeded on an 
 enlarged scale and with increased acceleration. 
 
 Luther, who then went forth in the strength 
 of God to fight the battle of the Lord of Hosts, 
 
FOREFATHERS. ]7 
 
 was one of the most zealous declaimers against 
 Popery, and he has for this reason been errone- 
 ously called the Father of Protestanisni. But 
 had Luther never lived, the Prostestant cause 
 would have prospered under God's providence, 
 and other men, great as he was, would have 
 been raised up to vindicate the truth. "Where 
 was Protestantism, that new religion, before Lu- 
 ther?" we have been insultingly asked. The 
 reader who attentively peruses the following 
 pages will be able to give an answer. 
 
 Section 4. — The Holy Catholic Church, before 
 the corruptions of the Romish Church produced 
 divisions. 
 
 For many ages after the rehgion of Jesus 
 Christ was first established, the Great body of 
 Christians scattered over the whole world were 
 called the Holy Catholic Church; the word Cath- 
 olic signifying general or universal. The Chris- 
 tians having one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 
 were agreed also in all the great articles of 
 Faith; and the congregations of different coun- 
 tries and kingdoms worshipped their common 
 2 
 
] 8 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 Saviour according to forms which Avere so much 
 ahke, that though there might be some differ 
 ences in point of disciphne, yet, as branches of 
 the same stem make one tree, so they made one 
 Church of Christ. They corresponded with 
 each other; they consuUed each other; they 
 helped each other when they were in poverty 
 or affliction; and thus they proved to the rest 
 of the world that they were brethren, being of 
 one mind, hving in peace together whenever 
 they met, and never striving together except for 
 the faith of the GospeL Such was their affec- 
 tionate bond of union, to whatever nation they 
 belonged; and well might the heathen say of 
 them, "See how they love one another!" One 
 great reason why the primitive Christians con- 
 tinued fast bound together in this communion of 
 saints and fellowship of the Holy Catliolic 
 Church, was, that nobody of any character for 
 piety or scriptural knowledge ever attempted to 
 introduce objects, doctrines, or services, which 
 were opposed to the written Word of God, or to 
 the simplicity of the Gospel: another reason 
 was, that no particular congregation or branch 
 of Christ's Universal Church endeavoured to 
 
FOREFATHERS. 19 
 
 lord it over another, or to assume the pre-emi- 
 nence. For very many years there was no such 
 thing- known in the Church as image-v/orship 
 or saint-worship, or compulsory confession to a 
 priest, or prohibitions against marriage, or any 
 such introductions of human invention. There 
 was nothing forced upon the will — there was 
 ^nothing to sear the conscience, or to make a de- 
 vout man feel, that, by his conformity to the 
 Church, he was acting against the revealed 
 Word of God. The Christians of those days 
 might have had their friendly discussions on 
 religious points ; but there was not any intole- 
 rant, unscriptural, or irrational doctrine pro- 
 pounded in such a manner as was likely to 
 divide the Christian world. 
 
 This unanimity continued as long as those 
 wise precepts of the apostles were observed : — 
 "Let no man beguile you of your reward in a 
 voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, 
 which things indeed have a show of wisdom 
 in will worship and humility, and neglecting of 
 the body." Col. ii. 18. 23. "Feed the flock of 
 God which is among you, taking the oversight 
 thereof, not by constraint, but willingly ; not for 
 
20 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 filthy lucre, but of a ready mind ; neither as be- 
 ing lords over God's heritage, but being ensam- 
 ples to the flock." 1 Pet. v. 2, 3. 
 
 Section. 5. — The first Protestants — Irenceus — 
 The Waldenses — The Albigenses, 
 
 But when the time came, as St. Paul prophe- 
 sied it should come, " that the man of sin should 
 be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth 
 and exalteth himself above all that is called 
 God, or that is worshipped; whose coming is 
 after the working of Satan, with all power, and 
 signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceiva- 
 bleness of unrighteousness ;" (2 Thess. ii. 3. 4. 
 9. 10.) — when the unhappy time came "that 
 some should depart from the faith, giving heed 
 to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speak- 
 mg lies in hypocrisy, and forbidding to marry, 
 and commanding to abstain from meats which 
 God hath created to be received with thanks- 
 giving of them which believe and know the 
 truth;" (1 Tim. iv. 1 — 3.) then the seamless 
 robe of Christ was torn, and the Church of 
 Rome apostatized from the religion taught by 
 
FOREFATHERS. 21 
 
 Christ and his apostles. Image-worship, and 
 worshipping of angels and saints, and forbidding 
 to marry, and abstaining from meats, and lord- 
 ing it over God's heritage, and the exalting of a 
 person called the Pope, sitting in the temple as 
 God himself, and lying wonders and other cor- 
 ruptions, from thenceforth distinguished the Ro- 
 man or most powerful branch of the Church; 
 and then humbler and less numerous, but more 
 pious congregations, were obliged to protest 
 against such errors, and afterwards to separate 
 from those who held them ; and this was the 
 origin of Protestanism. 
 
 'The first act in ecclesiastical history Avhich' 
 comes under this name, was that of Ireneeus,* 
 and of the Christians of Gaul, who lived between 
 the Rhone and the Alps, about the year of our 
 Lord 200, when they protested against the tyran- 
 ny and intolerance of Victor, bishop of Rome, 
 who endeavoured to force on them his own opin- 
 ions and practices. But though this outbreaking 
 of intolerance began at Rome, so early as about 
 
 * Irencei Opera, p. 340. Edit. Paris: 1710. "Victorem, 
 fortiter et graviter iiicrepavit." See Disscrtatio in libros Irenaei. 
 ibid. p. 86. See also Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 5. 24. 
 
 2* 
 
22 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 the year 200, and was followed by many doings 
 among the clergy of that city, of which other 
 Christians could not approve, yet it was a great 
 length of time before the usurpations and cor- 
 ruptions of the Romish Church became so gross, 
 as to compel the faithful servants of Christ to 
 have no more communion with her. All her 
 unscriptural services and practices were intro- 
 duced by degrees, one after another ; first a 
 small error, and then a greater: as, for example, 
 images were first used as memorials, and not as 
 objects of worship ; relics of dead saints were 
 collected and preserved with more superstition 
 than was right, but it was long before they were 
 adored. The Virgin Mary, the apostles, and 
 saints, after their death, were named with vene- 
 ration, and their memory was dearly and res- 
 pectfully cherished, as it ought to be now ; but 
 it was many ages before they were prayed to, or 
 before they were invoked for help and protec- 
 tion. In like manner, the clergy were at first 
 recommended not to marry ; next, they were for- 
 bidden to marry. It was also after the lapse of 
 centuries that the doctrine of transubstantiation 
 produced the sin of worshipping a consecrated 
 
FOREFATHERS. 23 
 
 wafer, and calling it Christ and God ; and that 
 the doctrine of purgatory led to the profanation 
 of receiving money for saying masses for the 
 dead, or the shameful traffic of selling indulgen- 
 ces. So likewise the exactions, and the usurpa- 
 tions, and the pretended power of the Romish 
 Church, over all other churches, were gradually 
 put forth. Rome, heing the capital of the world 
 and the seat of empire, her bishops were visited 
 very often, and had great respect paid them by 
 Christians of other countries. Having better op- 
 portunities of communicating with the pious and 
 the learned of all nations, it was naturally sup- 
 posed that their information and counsel would 
 be more valuable than that of other bishops and 
 clergy ; consequently they were more frequently 
 consulted, and great deference was paid to their 
 decisions. They took advantage of this, and 
 they pushed their claims and their impositions 
 farther and farther, till their tyranny could be 
 endured by the intelligent, the bold, and the 
 pious, no longer, and Protestantism spread from 
 one place to another. "Successors to the Prince 
 of the Apostles," " Vicars of Christ," " Univer- 
 sal Bishops," " Gods on Earth," and such Uke 
 
24 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 titles, which the Popes or Bishops of Rome have 
 arrogated, were not known during the primitive 
 ages of Christianity, nor was Rome then called 
 "tlie Mother and Mistress of Churches," or pro- 
 nounced to be "infallible :" therefore, when she 
 insisted upon the power which such titles infer, 
 those " who hold the Head," who know that 
 only "one is their master, even Christ," deter- 
 mined "to stand fast in the liberty wherewith 
 Christ had made them free, and not to be en- 
 tangled in the yoke of bondage ;" and tbey pro- 
 tested against the despot Church, and afterwards 
 separated from her. The Romish church con- 
 tinued, however, still to style herself the " Catho- 
 lic Church," when she was no longer catholic or 
 universal. Those Protestant Churches only can 
 be Catholic, whicb maintain scriptural doctrines 
 and articles of faith in which all true Christians 
 can unite. 
 
 Although there never was a period in which 
 God did not raise up witnesses unto himself, 
 who declared their adherence to the uncorrupt- 
 ed Gospel of Christ, and contended for the faith 
 delivered to the saints, yet at times they were 
 so few and obscure, compared with the multi- 
 
FOREFATHERS. 25 
 
 tudes who were deceived, as the word of pro- 
 phecy foretold, by the power, and signs, and ly- 
 ing wonders, and dehisions of the " man of sin," 
 that history makes little mention of them : and 
 no wonder, because the historians of the day, 
 for several centuries, were themselves among 
 the numlier of those who were ignorant of the 
 true faith, and who sided with its enemies. 
 But the truth cannot always be concealed ; and 
 we learn from the pages of an advocate of some 
 of the errors of Rome, who lived at the time,* 
 that there was a small body of Protestant Chris- 
 tians, in our sense of the term, dwelling in the 
 Cottian Alps, about the year 397. These se- 
 cluded Christians had their own bishops and 
 their own clergy in their mountain retreats ; 
 they had also their own church services, free 
 from the corruptions which had then crept into 
 the Romish Church. They had no images, no 
 saint-worship, no relic-worship, no masses for 
 the souls of dead men ; but they permitted their 
 clergy to marry, and they worshipped God ac- 
 
 * See the works of Jerome, ' Adv. Vigil.' Epist. 53. My 
 learned and indefatigable friend Mr. Faber first pointed out 
 this passage to me. 
 
2Q OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 cording to scriptural ordinances. For this they 
 were proscribed and calumniated by the Ro- 
 manists, and they in their turn protested against 
 them. It is very astonishing, and a certain 
 proof of God's protection, that tlie descendants 
 of these people live in the fastnesses of the same 
 momitains, and have continued to worship the 
 God of their fathers after tlie way which Pa- 
 pists call heresy, and to protest against Rome 
 from that time to this. They are now called 
 Waldenses, or Vaiidois, from the mountain val- 
 leys in wln'ch they have dwelt so long, and by 
 that name they have been known ever since the 
 year 1 100. But by what name tliey were call- 
 ed between 397 and 1100, we cannot say, be- 
 cause they were not distinctly noticed by chroni- 
 clers during that long interval. Perhaps tliey 
 are to be recognised as the Subalpina, Subal- 
 pines, or Pasasgii of ancient geography, living 
 as tliey did at the foot of the Alps, in the passes 
 between France and Italy. My assertions on 
 this part of our subject are supported by the re- 
 searches and opinions of that accurate historian. 
 Sir James Mackintosh, and of Mr. Le Bas, tlie 
 biographer of Wiclif. " With the dawn of his- 
 
FOREFATHERS. 27 
 
 tory," ^ays the former, " we discovered some 
 simple Christians in the valleys of the Alps, 
 where they still existvunder the ancient name of 
 Vaiidois, who, by the light of the New Testa- 
 ment, saw the extraordinary contrast between 
 the purity of primitive times, and the vices of 
 the gorgeous and imperious hierarchy which 
 surrounded them."* 
 
 Mr. Le Bas has gone more at length into the 
 argument. "There seems," he says, "to be a 
 strong presumption in favour of the belief that 
 the people of the vallej^s of Piedmont, known by 
 the name of the Vaudois or Waldenses, had pre- 
 served from a very early period a far purer faith 
 than that which was possessed by the great body 
 of Christendom. The history of this Suhalpine 
 Protestantism is indeed enveloped in such deep 
 obscurity, that any attempt to investigate it 
 would far exceed the limits or the design of the 
 present work. We cannot however reflect with- 
 out wonder and delight upon one precious docu- 
 ment of unquestionable authenticity, which may 
 be regarded as a confession of the faith of these 
 people in the twelfth century. The relic in 
 
 * ' England,' by Sir James Mackintosh, vol. i. p. 321. 
 
28 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 question is an ancient poem called ' The Noble 
 Lesson,' containing a metrical abridgement of 
 the history and doctrine of the Old and New 
 Testament, in the original language of the 
 country, and evidently compiled for the purpose 
 of perpetuating among the people the principles 
 of sound belief. It is beyond all doubt that the 
 essential doctrines and principles of our Refor- 
 mation will be found in this religious formulary, 
 which concludes with an exposure of the gross 
 errors of the Papacy, the simony of the priest- 
 hood, masses, and prayers for the dead, the im- 
 postures of absolution, and the abuses of the 
 power of the keys. From that time to the pre- 
 sent, the same opinions have been inflexibly 
 maintained by these simple mountaineers, who 
 have borne a perpetual and heroic testimony to 
 the faith of their fathers, in the midst of the 
 most merciless and appalling persecutions. The 
 extent and antiquity of the Waldensian perver- 
 sion is a subject of perpetual complaint with the 
 Papal authorities of the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries ; and if to this consideration we add 
 the traditions uniformly prevalent among the 
 uncorrupted shepherds, their own confident 
 
FOREFATHERS. 29 
 
 claims of immemorial purity in faith and doc- 
 trine, their obscure and solitary abodes, and their 
 remoteness from the scene of pontifical splen- 
 dours and despotism, we shall find but little diflfi- 
 culty in the surmise that the valleys of Pied- 
 mont may from primitive, perhaps from apostolic 
 times, have witnessed a more undefiled profes- 
 sion and practice of the Gospel, than can easily 
 be found among the more degenerate communi- 
 ties of Christian Europe. To myself, I confess, 
 the probability appears to be, not that the Vau- 
 dois shook oflf the superstitions of the Romish 
 Church, but rather that they had never put 
 them on ; and that when the hand of power 
 was stretched forth to force the spotted garment 
 upon them, they revolted at the oppression, and 
 at length recorded their protest against it, in the 
 form of that immortal Lesson, which to this day 
 may be regarded as their spiritual petition of 
 right,"* Mr. Le Bas adds in a note, " I cannot 
 but agree with Mr. Gilly, that ' it is much more 
 likely that a race of mountaineers, secluded from 
 the world, should have preserved the purity and 
 simplicity of the primitive Church, than that 
 * *Life of Wiclif,' p. 28—31. 
 
 3 
 
30 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 they should suddenly hecome Scripture readers 
 and reformers in the twelfth century, after hav- 
 ing been overwhelmed in the darkness that pre- 
 vailed in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centu- 
 ries.''* 
 
 There was another community which attract- 
 ed notice in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 
 by confessions of faith greatly at variance with 
 those of the Romanists. These were the Al- 
 bigenses, that unhappy people of the south of 
 France, whose history is written in letters of 
 blood, Avhose preachers were in England as 
 early as 1166, and who were entirely swept 
 away from the face of the earth, in a crusade 
 against them excited by Pope Innocent III. 
 
 At a conference at Montreal in the )^ear 
 1206, the Albigenses maintained, as AUix has 
 shown, — 
 
 " I. That the Church of Rome was not the 
 holy Church, nor the Spouse of Christ, but that 
 it was a Church which had drunk m the doc- 
 trine of devils. 
 
 " II. That the mass was neither instituted by 
 Christ nor his Apostles, but a human invention. 
 
 ♦ See ' Waldensian Researches,' p. 113. 
 
FOREFATHERS. 31 
 
 "III. That the prayers of the hving are un- 
 profitable for the dead. 
 
 "IV. That the purgatory maintained in the 
 Church of Rome is no better than a human in- 
 vention, to satisfy the avarice of the priests. 
 
 " V. That the saints ought not to be prayed 
 
 vinto. 
 
 " VI. That transubstantiation is a human in- 
 vention and erroneous doctrine ; and that the 
 worshipping of the bread is manifest idolatry. 
 
 "That therefore it was necessary to sepa- 
 rate from the Church of Rome, in which the 
 contrary was said and taught, because one can- 
 not assist at the mass without partaking of the 
 idolatry there practised, nor expect salvation by 
 any other means than by Jesus Christ, nor 
 transfer to creatures the honour which is due to 
 the Creator, nor say, concerning the bread, tliat 
 it is God, and worship it as such, without incur- 
 ring the pain of eternal damnation, because 
 idolaters shall not inherit the kingdom of 
 heaven. For all these things, which they as- 
 serted, they were hated and persecuted to 
 death." 
 
32 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 Section 6. — The spirit of Protestantism in 
 Britain coeval with the Pope^s pretended jurisdic- 
 tion here. 
 
 But many of those, who allow that in some 
 comitries there existed inconsiderable communi- 
 ties, which from early times declared against all 
 connexion with the Romish Church, do still as- 
 sert that Papal Christianity was the most an- 
 cient form of the Christian religion in England, 
 and that there was no Protestantism among our 
 ancestors before the sixteenth century. 
 
 We will go back nearly a thousand years,* 
 from the Romanists' date of the origin of Eng- 
 lish Protestantism to the time when Augustin 
 arrived in England ; and the following dramatic 
 description, given by a Roman Catholic historian, 
 of the attempt of that missionary from Rome to 
 subjugate the British clergy to the control of the 
 
 * " If we consult an earlier period, we shall find king Ar- 
 thur promoting his chaplain to the Archbishopric of York. 
 Galf. Monu. 9. 8, and British Synods nominating Prelates for 
 IJritish Sees, without the slightest reference to Rome. Spel- 
 raan. Concil. 1. 60, 61." 
 
FOREFATHERS. . 33 
 
 Pope, shall show whether there were then 
 Christican communities, independent of the 
 Church of Rome, in this island, or not. 
 
 " Gregory (the Pope) had written to Augus- 
 tin, that he had subjected all the bishops of 
 Britain to his authority. The missionary, with 
 the aid of Ethelbert, prevailed on the British 
 prelates to meet him at a place which has since 
 been called Augustin's Oak, in Worcestershire. 
 After a long and unavailing debate, the confer- 
 ence was adjourned to another day. In the in- 
 terval the Britons consulted a neighbouring her- 
 mit, who advised them to watch the behaviour 
 of Augustin ; if he rose to meet them, they 
 were to consider him a man of unassuming dis- 
 position, and to hsten to his demands ; but if he 
 kept his seat, they should condemn him of pride, 
 and reject his authority. With this sapient ad- 
 monition, which left to accident the decision of 
 the controversy, seven bishops, with Dinoth, ab- 
 bot of Bangor, repaired to the place of confer- 
 ence.* Augustin happened to be seated, and 
 did not rise at their arrival : both his reasons 
 
 * For one of the best accounts of this transaction, see Spel- 
 man.Concil. 1. 104—110. 
 3* 
 
34 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 and his authority were consequently despised. 
 In 'points of doctrine there had been no differ- 
 ence between them ; and to facilitate their com- 
 phance in other matters, the archbishop had re- 
 duced his demands to three heads; — that they 
 should observe the Catholic computation of 
 Easter ; should adopt the Roman rite, in the ad- 
 ministration of baptism ; and should join with 
 the missionaries in preaching to the Saxons. 
 Each of these requests, in obedience to the ad- 
 vice of the hermit, was pertinaciously refused."* 
 In an ancient manuscript, preserved among 
 the Parker MSS. of Corpus Christi College, 
 Cambridge, there is a passage to this effect : — 
 " After the Saxons had become Christians by 
 means of Austin, in such sort as Austin had 
 taught them, the Britons would not eat or drink 
 with them, because they corrupted with super- 
 stition, images, and idolatry, the true religion of 
 Christ." The evidence of the old chronicler, 
 who wrote thus, may be thought to require 
 some confirmation, and we can furnish it, upon 
 the undoubted testimony of the venerable Bede, 
 who also shows that there was an intimate con- 
 
 * Lingard's 'History of England,' vol. i. p. 112. 
 
FOREFATHERS. 35 
 
 nexion between the ancient British, Irish, and 
 Scottish Churches, and a common adherence to 
 observances differinsr from those of the Church 
 of Rome : — " We learnt through Bishop Daga- 
 nus, when he came to this island, and through 
 the abbot Columbanus, when he came to Gaul, 
 that the Scots* (of Ireland)' do not differ from 
 the Britons in their observances. For Bishop 
 Daganus, when he came to us, refused not only 
 to eat with us at the same table, but in the same 
 house." Bede, Eccl. Hist. lib. 2. c. 4. Again : 
 — "Even to this day, the Britons are in the 
 habit of expressing their contempt both for the 
 faith and the religion of the Anglo-Saxons, and 
 to hold no more intercourse with them than with 
 the Pagans," lib. 2. c. 20. Bede made the first 
 of these two statements on the authority of 
 Laurentius, who succeeded Augustin in the see 
 of Canterbury, and who played off the cheat of 
 lacerating his own shoulders, and pretending 
 
 * Bede farther shows, Eccles. Hist. hb. 3. c. 3. 4 and 25, that 
 the Scottish-clergy of lona, or Icolmkill, and its numerous de- 
 pendencies in Scotland, were still independent of Rome 100 
 years after Laurentius complained of the Non-Conformity of 
 the British, Irish, and Scottish Churches. 
 
36 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 that he had been flogged by St. Peter, for show- 
 hig too little zeal. Pretty good proof this, that 
 although Pope Gregory took upon himself to in- 
 vest Augustin and his successors with authority 
 over all the clergy and bishops of Britain, yet 
 the British Churchmen would neither submit to 
 the Romish discipline, nor adopt the corruptions 
 of image-worship, saint, and relic-AVorsliip, &c., 
 which the Italian pontiff attempted to impose 
 upon them. The religion of Rome, therefore, 
 was not at that period the universal religion of 
 our Christian ancestors. 
 
 We will take another period of history. Wil- 
 fred, a Northumbrian bishop, was deposed by tbe 
 authorities of his native country in the year 680. 
 He went to Rome, and implored the Pope to re- 
 instate him. This appeal to the Papal see, and 
 the Pope's mandate for his restoration to the 
 bishopric, were treated with equal contempt by 
 the king and clergy of Northumberland, who 
 declared that they would not permit the Roman 
 prelate to exercise jurisdiction over them.* 
 
 These protests were against the authority of 
 
 + It was many years before Wilfrid was restored. See 
 Bede, EccL Hist. 5. 20. and Spel. Cone. 1. 162. 203. 206. 
 
FOREFATHERS, 37 
 
 the Roman Church ; now for an instance of 
 English rejection of the doctrines of Romanism 
 at a very early period : — 
 
 In the year 787, the Council of Nice declared 
 most solemnly that image-worship was to be ob- 
 served by Christians. The Church of Rome 
 approved of the canon. The matter was sub- 
 mitted to a synod of the clergy of England five 
 years afterwards, and it was pronounced by 
 Enghsh theologians, that the Council had " de- 
 termined many things inconsistent with, and 
 contrary to, the true faith ; especially the wor- 
 ship of images, a usage altogether execrated by 
 the Church of God."* 
 
 Alcuin also, an Englishman, who flourished at 
 that time, wrote an epistle to prove that image- 
 worship, and the canon of the Council of Nice, 
 which sanctioned it, were contrary to Scripture. 
 
 We will conclude this part of our subject by 
 a quotation from Blackstone. " The ancient 
 British Church, by whomsoever planted, was a 
 stranger to the Bishop of Rome, and his pretend- 
 
 * See Soames's ' Bampton Lectures.' Not. Binii ad 2 Nlc. 
 Syn. et Fran. Cone, j Ma^d. Cent. 8. c. 9, and Spel. Cone. 1. 
 306—8. 
 
38 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 ed authority : but tlie Pagan Saxon invaders 
 having driven the professors of Christianity to 
 the remotest corners of our island, their own 
 conversion was afterwards effected by Augustin 
 the monk, and other missionaries from the court 
 of Rome. This necessarily introduced some 
 few of the Papal corruptions, in point of faith 
 and doctrhie, but we read of no civil authority 
 claimed by the Pope in these kingdoms, till the 
 end of the Norman conquest."* 
 
 Section 7. — Britain under Romish thraldom, and 
 Wiclif the Protestant liberator. 
 
 Thus England had witnesses, at an early 
 period of her history, to testify against the inno- 
 vations of Rome ; but though she produced a 
 noble array of divines, who, from time to time, 
 did all they could to resist the invaders of her 
 spiritual rights, at length she became enslaved 
 by Papal tyranny. Under the Anglo-Saxon 
 dynasties the island was comparatively indepen- 
 dent, and was more in communion'\ with, than 
 
 * Blackstone's ' Commentaries,' b. 4 : c. 8. 
 t See many proofs of this in Spel. Cone. vol. i. pp. 153. 182. 
 194. 203. 237. 293. 317. 320. 
 
FOREFATHERS. 39 
 
 in subjection to, the Italian Pontiff; but the Nor- 
 man line of monarchs, after William the Con- 
 queror, submitted to the dictation of the Popes, 
 and conceded one point after another, until the 
 nation found itself completely under the foot of 
 a foreign bishop. 
 
 The Pope arrogated the right not only of 
 crowning but of uncrowning her princes ; and 
 even now an Englishman's cheek burns with 
 shame at the recollection of Henry II. consenting 
 to be scourged at the command of that alien ; 
 and of his pusillanimous son, John, laying the 
 crown of England at the legate's footstool, and 
 taking it back from his hands, as the acknow- 
 ledged vassel and tributary of Rome. 
 
 The benighted people of that day, having once 
 surrendered their spiritual liberties, were forced 
 to bend their necks to the vilest and most 
 offensive species of thraldom which their bond- 
 masters of the Popedom could inflict. 
 
 By a sentence called an interdict^ the whole 
 kingdom, on an offence given to the Pope, in 
 John's reign, was deprived of the public exercise 
 of religion : the churches were ordered to be shut, 
 and the clergy to withhold their ministrations; 
 
40 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 and thus did the Holy Father consign her chil- 
 dren to the direst condition tliatman can imagnie, 
 — to a famine of the Word of God. Inconsis- 
 tency worthy of Romanism ! 
 
 The Christian, according to the Romish 
 Church, cannot be saved without the priest and 
 the forms of religion ; and he who called himself 
 Christ's Vicar upon earth interdicted all priestly 
 functions and every religious rite. The doors of 
 the sanctuary were closed ; the sacraments were 
 forbidden ; children were unbaptized, and the 
 dead were deprived of their funeral obsequies. 
 A nation which can tamely bear such an exercise 
 of spiritual prerogative as this will sink very deep 
 into the slough of debasement before sh^ makes 
 any struggle to extricate herself. It was 150 
 years after this interdict, ere an avenger of the 
 religious sufferings of England laid the first axe 
 to the root of the noisome tree, which, over- 
 shadowed and poisoned the land. Wiclif, who 
 was born in 1324, and died 1384, was the man 
 to whom we owe this debt of gratitude : and the 
 following brief sketch of the ignorance which he 
 strove to dispel, and of abuses to which he op- 
 posed himself, will show that if he, or one like 
 
FOREFATHERS. 41 
 
 him, had not lifted up his voice of denunciation, 
 the very stones would have cried out. 
 
 The Bible was literally a sealed book ; for there 
 was no such thing as a complete version of Scrip- 
 tures in the English tongue until Wiclif achieved 
 a translation.* Even after Wiclif s own copy 
 was finished, the value of a New Testament was 
 £2 I65. 6d., equal to £30 now. There were in- 
 deed some few translations and paraphrases of 
 portions of Scripture, but these were doled out 
 sparingly and unwillingly ; for the very idea of 
 opening the sacred page to the people, and of 
 making it common to the laity, was thought to 
 be sacrilegious. "It is casting the Gospel-pearl 
 abroad to be trodden under foot of swine," said 
 Knyghton, a Romish historian of that period. If 
 the book of our holy faith, by which only they 
 could be judged, was so neglected, no wonder 
 that the doctrines, conversation, and conduct of 
 the clergy were unworthy of their profession, and 
 that priests "dealt falsely," and "ate up the 
 people as it were bread." Many of the parochial 
 
 * The price of a Bible in Latin, an unknown tongue to all 
 but the learned, was as much as a labouring man's price of 
 work for fifteen years, and equal to SOQl. of our money* 
 
 4 
 
42 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 benefices were held by foreigners;* French, Ital- 
 ians, and Spaniards, nominated by the Pope, 
 who lived out of the country, without performing 
 any sacred functions, and consumed the produce 
 of their livings at a distance from their flock. 
 This non-residence of the clergy invited multi- 
 tudes of the order of Mendicants, or begging 
 friars, who proved as great a plague, and as de- 
 vouring as the locusts of Egypt. In the first in- 
 stance, a few Dominicans Avere permitted to es- 
 tablish themselves in the country : they professed 
 to be humble and poor, and grateful foi protec- 
 tion; but their numbers and their pretensions 
 increased, till the kingdom swarmed with them, 
 and ^Toaneel under their extortions and their li- 
 centiousiiess. They beset the chambers of the 
 weak and the superstitious, and the beds of the 
 dying ; and, persuading them that there was no 
 salvation without their passports to Heaven, 
 much of the property of the land fell into the 
 
 * In 1357, soiTie foreign pluralists M'ere holding as many as 
 twenty places of preferment. Great complaints had previously 
 been made cf these harpies. One Pope sent his precepts to 
 three English bishops to provide for thirty Italian clergy out of 
 the first vacancies. See " Turner's England," viii. 69. 
 
FOREFATHERS. 4S 
 
 hands of these bare-footed pretenders to poverty, 
 by the bequests of their dupes, who impoverished 
 their famiUes under the hope of saving their own 
 souls. It is said that fraternities of the same 
 order are now finding their way again into Eng- 
 land : if so, let Wiclif's words be remembered — 
 '' God says, that evil teachers are the cause of 
 the destruction of the people : and friars are the 
 principal evil teachers : they are the principal 
 cause of destroying the world." 
 
 In this state of things, v/hen the whole land 
 was everrun with the agents of Rome, preaching 
 up the Pope's supremacy, and bribing to submis- 
 sion, by pardons and indulgences, how great 
 must have been the vigour of Wiclif's mind, the 
 independence of his soul, to take his stand in the 
 citadel of truth, to be fearless of the frowns and 
 the contempt that awaited him, and regardless 
 of the clamour that would be excited against 
 him ! The Romanists at this very time felt 
 themselves to be so strong in England, that the 
 Pope revived his claim of sovereignty over the 
 realm, and had the impudence and the folly to 
 demand a yearly tribute of ten thousand marks, 
 as the acknowledgment of our vassalage. And 
 
44 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 on what ground did the Pope make this de- 
 mand 1 — In virtue of an impost granted by King 
 John, and to be paid for ever, for tlic removal of 
 the interdict laid on his subjects ! So then the 
 nation could only be absolved for money ! 
 
 Englishmen ! was not Wiclif justified in pro- 
 testing against Popery, and in calling upon his 
 countrymen to break the fetters of Rome, when 
 an Italian priest, whose seat of power was far dis- 
 tant, sued your king for homage and tribute 1 
 Half the landed property was already in the 
 hands of the Romish priesthood: rapacious aliens, 
 strangers to our manners and customs, who were 
 totally unable to speak the language of England, 
 and v/ho never landed on her coasts, enjoyed 
 many of her dignities and benefices, and drained 
 her of her wealth. The Popes levied a tax on 
 Church income, which amounted to five times as 
 much as the king's revenues ; they exacted the 
 first-fruits of all benefices ; they claimed the 
 goods of all who died without wills ; and when 
 they had thus made the nation to crouch be- 
 tween two burthens — impoverishment and dis- 
 grace, they thought to rivet the chains more du- 
 rably, and to imprint the mark of the beast more 
 
FOREFATHERS. 45 
 
 indelibly, by the burning brands of homage and 
 tribute. 
 
 What has been, may be ; and the battle which 
 Wiclif fought for his native land will have to be 
 fought again, unless men's eyes and ears are open 
 in time to the stealthy march of their Romish 
 assailants. Wichf did not preach against Rome 
 till her enormities cried aloud ; until her clergy 
 were so corrupt and profligate, that, as Chaucer, 
 the poet of that age, too truly expressed it, — 
 
 To put pennies in their purse, 
 They will sell both Heaven and Hell. 
 
 Was it not time to cry — " Come out of her, my 
 people," when the ministers of the Roman Church 
 ceased to preach the words of eternal hfe — but 
 made lying miracles, and legendary histories, 
 and puerile and monstrous fables of deliverances 
 from purgatory, the subjects of their pulpit dis- 
 courses ; when these were the themes in which 
 they beguiled and led captive the souls of men, 
 and banished the sound of the Gospel from the 
 earth] 
 
 There are men professing this same Popish 
 faith that impoverished England afore-time, and 
 4* 
 
46 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 committed her best sons to the flames, who are 
 now clamouring for, and prophesying, the down- 
 fall of the Chmxh of England ; and they have 
 had the cunning to win over to their side the in- 
 fidel and half-believer, and they are trying to in- 
 duce the orthodox dissenters of England to make 
 common cause with them : and an outcry, loud 
 and discordant, is raised against the Church, 
 and there is a clamour for her destruction ; and if 
 she falls, she Avill fall not in her worst, but in her 
 best days, when she is trying to put her house in 
 order, — when her ministers, high and low, are 
 more distinguished for good conduct and learning 
 and zeal, than at any former period of her his- 
 tory. 
 
 But even if her revenues be taken away, and 
 the polished corners of her temple be demolished, 
 yet will she not fall ! Her episcopacy will re- 
 main ; her orders of priesthood and her decent 
 administrations will remain. Her liturgy will 
 outlive the mandate for her destruction ; her con- 
 solations and her sacraments will survive, and 
 her voice will yet be heard high above the storm: 
 — " The Lord hath chastened me sore, but he 
 hath not given me over unto death." 
 
FOREFATHERS. 47 
 
 What a stir it must have made, as his biogra- 
 pher says, when Widif pubhshed his work "On 
 the Truth and Meaning of Scripture," and when, 
 instead of preaching about the good offices of the 
 saints, and the influence and intercession of the 
 Virgin, he spoke of the one only Name by which 
 men can receive heaUh and salvation ! 
 
 How the astonished congregations must have 
 listened with admiring earnestness, when, in- 
 stead of magnifying saints and anchorites and 
 monks, and boasting of the signs and wonders 
 wrought by their hands, "he solemnly dwelt 
 on the supreme majesty of Jehovah," — on the 
 freedom and sovereignty of divine grace, — on the 
 terms of forgiveness and salvation, — and on the 
 wonders of atonement ! These were his topics, 
 — the same, Mr. Le Bas most truly observes, as 
 become a Protestant pulpit at the present day. 
 
 Section 8. — Widif ^s translation of the Scriptures, 
 and his other writings, and the effects produced by 
 them. 
 
 But not to preaching only did Wichf trust for 
 the instruction of the people ; and therefore it 
 
48 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 was that he translated the Bible into his native 
 language, and multiplied copies as far as he 
 could, and placed them in the hands of Scripture- 
 readers, whom he sent forth to read out of the 
 Book of Lfe, that the men of England might 
 hear them speak in their own tongues, wherein 
 they were born, the wonderful works of God. It 
 was this English version of the Scripture, which 
 made the Sacred Volume more known to the laity 
 at large, than it was before known to the clergy 
 themselves ; and thus, as Dr. Lingard, the Ro- 
 man Catholic historian, confesses, "a spirit of 
 inquiry was generated, and the seeds were sown 
 of that religious revolution, which in a little more 
 than a century astonished and convulsed the na- 
 tions of Europe." 
 
 Here then, in our own land, according to 
 the acknowledgment of one hostile to Protes- 
 tants, there was Protestantism before Luther, 
 there was a vindication of the religious privileges 
 of the native against the intrusive exactions of 
 the alien. The prodigious importance of en- 
 couraging the people to read the Word of God 
 in their own tongue, was soon felt, and it brought 
 down a storm of persecution upon the reformer's 
 
FOREFATHERS. 49 
 
 head. Nothing has ever exasperated or alarmed 
 the Romish priesthood so much as the circula- 
 tion of Scripture in the vernacular language 
 without notes or comment. 
 
 As soon as Wiclif s Bible began to do its work, 
 a bill was brought into parliament to forbid the pe- 
 rusal of the English Bible by the laity. But for 
 that time it was thrown out ; and the translator's 
 defence of his version, and vindication of the peo- 
 ple's right to have the free use of Scripture, is an 
 efifort of powerful reasoning, which is well worthy 
 of being recited in our own days, when Popish 
 influence is again threatening Protestant princi- 
 ples and Bible-reading. " To condemn it," said 
 Wicliff, "is to condemn the Holy Ghost, who 
 gave the Word of God in tongues to the Apostles 
 of Christ, that they might speak it in all lan- 
 guages that were ordained of God under Heaven. 
 Scripture is the Faith of the Church : therefore, 
 as secular men ought to know the Faith, so it is 
 to be taught to them in whatever language is 
 best known to them. The truth of the Faith is 
 clearer and more exact in Scripture than the 
 priests know how to express it : it is expedient, 
 therefore, that the faithful should themselves 
 
50 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 search out and discover the sense of the Faith, 
 by having the Scriptures in a language which 
 they know and understand. He who hinders 
 this, does his endeavour that the people should 
 continue in a damnable and unbelievinof state. 
 Prelates, and the Pope, and friars, and others, 
 may prove defective: accordingly Christ and his 
 Apostles converted the world by making known 
 to them the truths of scripture in a language fa- 
 miliar to the people; and for this purpose the 
 Holy Spirit gave them the knowledge of all 
 tongues. Why then should not Christ's disci- 
 ples of the present day take freely from the same 
 loaf, and distribute to the people ? All Christians 
 must stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, 
 and be answerable to him for all the goods, 
 wherewith he has entrusted them. It is there- 
 fore necessarv that all the faithful should know 
 these goods, and the use of them ; for an answer 
 by prelate or attorney will not then avail, but 
 every one must answer in his own person." 
 
 " TAe Scripture alone is truth.^^ " The Scripture 
 alone is the faith of the Church." This was Wic- 
 lif s argument — " The grand and solid maxim," 
 says his eloquent biographer, " upon which, as 
 
FOREFATHERS. 51 
 
 Upon the Eternal Rock, he built up the defence 
 of his great undertaking, and indeed the whole 
 fabric of his scheme of Reformation. We have 
 here the vigorous germ of Protestantism, cast by 
 him with a bold and vigorous hand into the ge- 
 nerous soil of his country, there to lie for a long 
 and tempestuous period, to all appearance dor- 
 mant and powerless till the season should arrive 
 for its starting into life." 
 
 After the death of this undaunted reformer, his 
 enemies, and the haters of light, succeeded in 
 obtaining a decree of convocation to this effect : 
 — that " no one shall translate any text of 
 Sacred Scripture, by his own authority, into the 
 English or any other tongue, in the way of 
 book, treatise, or tract ; and no publication of 
 this sort composed in the time of John Wichf, or 
 since, shall be read either in part or in whole, 
 either in public or in private, under pain of the 
 greater excommunication, until such translation 
 shall be approved by the diocesan of the place ; 
 every one who shall act in contradiction to this 
 order to be punished as an abettor of heresy and 
 error." 
 
 The works which Wiclif left behind him bear 
 
52 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 witness to his most astonishing dihgence; among 
 others, it is said that as many as three hundred 
 of his famihar sermons still remain. In these 
 and other treatises, we find that his active and 
 enhghtened mind was constantly engaged in ex- 
 posing errors, against which we now protest, es- 
 pecially the doctrine of transubstantiation, auri- 
 cular confession, Papal indulgences. Papal ex- 
 communication and interdicts, and Papal supre- 
 macy. Wiclif died in peace at his rectory, not 
 because his enemies were moderate and forbear- 
 ing, but because they dared not pvirsue him into 
 the district which his presence and his virtues 
 had rendered a very sanctuary and city of refuge. 
 He was so venerated by his parishioners and 
 neighbours, that when his spirit took its flight to 
 the realms of everlasting rest, every memorial of 
 him was preserved with the most devoted affec- 
 tion ; and the stranger who visits Lutterworth 
 may see the chair on which he was wont to sit, 
 and on which he died ; the oak of the pulpit from 
 which he preached ; the table on which he 
 wrote ; and a relic of the cloak which covered his 
 venerable person. 
 
FOREFATHERS. 53 
 
 Section 9. — The Lollards — Lord Cobham, and 
 the sufferers under the statute of burning heretics. 
 
 The death of Wiclif, Avhich took place in 
 1384, checked, but did not crush, the springing- 
 plant of the Reformation. His codes, his opinions, 
 and his principles, were circulated by his follow- 
 ers, who were called Lollards ; but why so called, 
 we cannot satisfactorily explain. In spite of 
 every attempt to keep them down, the Lollard 
 Protestants increased in numbers, and spread 
 from one county to another. Most of their te- 
 nets were directed against the doctrines and pos- 
 sessions of the Romish Church. They had am- 
 ple cause to declaim against doctrines which dis- 
 honoured God and enslaved men ; and against 
 possessions held in England, in great part by 
 foreigners, and all under the tenure of a foreign- 
 er's permission, at the will of the Pope. The 
 Romanists knew the weakness of their cause too 
 well to trust its defence to argument and preach- 
 ing ; therefore they obtained an act of parlia- 
 ment, in 1399, under which they were empowered 
 to burn the heretics. This act is called the statute 
 5 
 
54 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 de Heretico Comhurendo, i. e. for the burning of 
 heretics. What a parh anient ! What a state of 
 things ! What a picture of Popery ! Here is 
 no conceahuent ! The object of the bill was 
 openly professed — to hum heretics ! The pream- 
 ble of the act runs in this style : — " Whereas di- 
 vers unauthorized preachers go about teaching 
 new doctrines and heretical opinions, maldng 
 conventicles and confederacies, holding schools, 
 writing books, misinforming the people, and daily 
 committing enormities too horrible to be heard,'' 
 &c. : it then enacts, — " Therefore, if any person 
 so convicted shall refuse to abjure such preachings, 
 doctrines, opinions, schools, and informations, 
 he shall be burnt on a high place before the peo- 
 ple, that such punishment may strike terror into 
 the minds of others." This account of the pro- 
 ceeding is copied from a Roman Catholic's his- 
 tory of it (Dr. Lingard's.) Observe, therefore, 
 under the Roman Catholic establishment in this 
 country, when the Papists were in power, (that 
 establishment and that power against which Pro- 
 testants are so called for protesting,) men were 
 to be burnt for teaching new doctrines and heretical 
 opinions, making conventicles and confederacies. 
 
FOREFATHERS. 55 
 
 holding schools, writing books, and misinforming 
 the people ! The Act of Parliament specifies no 
 other crime ; for the charge " of daily committing 
 enormities too horrible to be /learc/," means nothing: 
 if any enormity had really been committed by the 
 Lollard Protestants, their adversaries would have 
 been too glad to state it fully and by name, to 
 justify the severity of this Burning Act. B ut this 
 statute was not rigid enough ; therefore the 
 House of Commons, which was full of Roman 
 Catholics in that day, petitioned the King, that 
 " when any man or woman was taken and im- 
 prisoned for Lollardism, he might be instantly put 
 on his answer, and have such judgment as he 
 deserved, for, an example to others of such wicked 
 sect, that they might soon cease from their 
 wicked preachings, and keep themselves to the 
 Christian faith. 
 
 Popery and Protestantism now began fairly to 
 display their opposite characters in England at 
 the rehgious trials and executions which took 
 place. In 1400, William Sautre, rector of Lynn, 
 in Norfolk, after begging that he might be per- 
 mitted to dispute before the Lords and Commons 
 on the subject of religion, was brought to trial, 
 
56 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 and burnt on charges of which tlie following 
 were the principal : — " He saith that he will not 
 worship the cross on which Christ suffered, but 
 only Christ that suffered upon the cross :" also, 
 " that he would sooner worship a temporal king 
 than the aforesaid wooden cross :" also, " that 
 every priest and deacon is more bound to preach 
 the Word of God, than to say the canonical 
 hours :" also, " that after pronouncing of the sa- 
 cramental words of the body of Christ, the bread 
 remaineth of the same nature that it was before, 
 neither doth it cease to be bread." 
 
 Soon afterwards, John Badby was committed 
 to the flames for no greater crime than this 
 avowal : — " After the consecration the bread re- 
 maineth the same material bread which it was 
 before ; nevertheless, it is a sign or sacrament of 
 the Living God. I believe the Omnipotent God 
 in Trinity to be One. But if every consecrated 
 host be the Lord's body, than there are twenty 
 thousand Gods in England." 
 
 In 1417, during Henry V.'s reign, the cele- 
 brated Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, was 
 roasted alive at a slow fire, after having been 
 condemned as a heretic ; or to use the words of 
 
FOREFATHERS. 57 
 
 his sentence, which sets forth Popery and Protes- 
 tantism in contradistinction, because " we have 
 found him not only an evident heretic in his own 
 person, but also a mighty maintainer of other he- 
 retics, against the faith and religion of the holy 
 and universal Church of Rome ; namely, about 
 the two sacraments of the altar and of penance, 
 besides the Pope's power and pilgrimages."* 
 
 The offences of which Lord Cobham was 
 guilty, were his maintenance of a great number 
 of itinerant preachers in many parts of the coun- 
 try; his care in collecting, transcribing, and cir- 
 culating the works of Wiclif among the common 
 people, and more especially his zeal in having 
 copies of Wiclif 's Bible multiplied at a very great 
 expense to himself. In vindication of this martyr 
 from the calumnies of his adversaries, I will add 
 his own account of his religious opinions : — 
 
 " 1. I believe that the most worshipful sacra- 
 ment of the altar is Christ's body in the form of 
 bread. 
 
 " 2. That every man who would be saved must 
 forsake sin, and do penance for sins already com- 
 mitted, with true and very sincere contrition. 
 * ' State Trials,' vol. i. p. 46. 
 5* 
 
58 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 " 3. That images might be allowable to re- 
 present and give men lively ideas of the passion 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the martyrdom 
 and good lives of the saints ; but if any man give 
 that worship to dead images which is due only 
 to God, or put such hope and trust in the help of 
 them as he should do in God, he becomes a 
 grievous idolater. 
 
 " 4. That the matter of pilgrimages may be 
 settled in a few words : a man may spend all 
 his days in pilgrimages, and lose his soul at last; 
 but he that knows the holy commandments of 
 God, and keepeth them, shall be saved, though 
 he never visit the shrines of the saints, as men 
 now do in their pilgrimages to Canterbury, Rome, 
 and other places." 
 
 During Lord Cobham's trial, a scene and a 
 dialogue took place, strongly characteristic of the 
 principles of the two parties. 
 
 Archbishop Arundel recommended Cobham to 
 ask for absolution. " I never yet trespassed 
 against you," he replied, "and therefore I do 
 not feel tlie want of your absolution." Then 
 kneeling down, he exclaimed, " I confess myself 
 here unto thee, my Eternal Living God, that I 
 
FOREFATHERS. 59 
 
 have been a grievous sinner. Good Lord, I 
 humbly ask thee mercy : of thee have I need of 
 absolution." 
 
 He was asked, " Do you beheve that after the 
 words of consecration there remains any material 
 bread !" 
 
 " The Scriptures, he answered, make no men- 
 tion of material bread. I beheve that Christ's 
 body remains in the form of bread. In the Sa- 
 crament there is both Christ's body and bread : 
 the bread is the thing that we see with our eyes, 
 but the body of Christ is hid, being seen only by 
 
 faith." 
 
 One of the bishops exclaimed vehemently, " It 
 is foul heresy to call it bread !" Cobham re- 
 plied, " St. Paul the Apostle was as wise a man 
 as you, and perhaps as good a Christian, and yet 
 he calls it bread." 
 
 Dr. Walden, the prior to the Carmahtes, now 
 lost all patience, and exclaimed, "What rash 
 and desperate people are these followers of 
 
 Wiclif!" 
 
 The witness which Lord Cobham then bare 
 to Wicklif 's virtues, is a most valuable testimony 
 
60 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 to that great man's worth, and to the effects of 
 his doctrhies : 
 
 " Before God and man, said Cobham, " I so- 
 lemnly here profess, that, till I knew Wiclif, 
 whose judgment ye so highly disdain, I never 
 abstained from sin ; but after I became acquaint- 
 ed with that virtuous man and his despised doc- 
 trines, it hath been otherwise with me : so much 
 grace could I never find in all your pompous in- 
 structions." 
 
 In the beginning of Henry VI.'s reign, Wil- 
 liam Taylor, of Bristol, gave evidence by his suf- 
 ferings at the stake, that the Protestant leaven 
 was still working, and that the Romish hatred 
 of free inquiry on religious matters was growing 
 fiercer and more intolerant. The crimes laid to 
 the charge of this witness of the truth were, 
 that he had asserted " that prayer is to be di- 
 rected to God alone; — that the saints are not to 
 be worshipped or invoked; — and that to pray to 
 any created being is to commit idolatry."* 
 
 Besides these, there were simple-minded men 
 of lower degree — peasants and mechanics, who, 
 when they were plying the loom or the plough, 
 
 + Fox, i. p. 605. 
 
FOREFATHERS. Q\ 
 
 meditated deeply on the things of God, and who 
 had their eyes providentially opened to see the 
 absurdity of the legends that were told them; 
 of the penances that were imposed on them ; 
 of the false miracles that were played off upon 
 them ; of the terrors of purgatory with which 
 they were to be scared ; of the indulgences 
 which were offered to them for money ; and who 
 had their nerves braced to raise their voices 
 against such monstrous fables out of the con- 
 suming flames. We owe much to these, as well 
 as to the lordly Cobham, and to the learned 
 theologians and students who interpreted God's 
 Word faithfully, and died in attestation of it ; 
 and we gratefully acknowledge that stones were 
 brought to the Protestant fabric, and that the 
 foundations of the noble temple, which has 
 since reared its head to Heaven, were laid in 
 part by the hands of workmen, whom the pha- 
 risaic Papists would call " contemptible rustics 
 and unlearned laymen." 
 
 The civil wars between the adherents to the 
 houses of York and Lancaster put some sort of 
 stop to religious inquiry and religious persecution. 
 
gg OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 Section 10.* — Protestantism gains strength be- 
 fore Luther, and advances in spite of Henry VIII. 
 
 When the nation began to breathe after her 
 pohtical bloodshed, fire and torture again pur- 
 sued those who dared to think and act more 
 freely than the Romish priesthood gave them 
 permission. At Coventry, in the year 1519, six 
 men and one woman were burnt for teaching 
 their children the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and 
 the Ten Commandments in the vulgar tongues. 
 These examples are enough to prove to convic- 
 tion, that long before the Spirit of the Lord came 
 mightily upon Luther, and he arose like another 
 Sampson to break the bands of Dalilah and the 
 Philistines; there were intrepid and faithful wit- 
 nesses in other parts of the world, and especially 
 in England, who were depositaries of the Truth 
 till God was pleased to make it triumphant. 
 Mr. Sharon Turner has well expressed this sen- 
 
 * I trust that this Section, together with Section 13, will ex- 
 pose the falsehood of Cobbett's statement in his "Legacy to 
 Parsons," that the Church of England is a creature of tlie 
 State forced upon the people. 
 
FOREFATHERS. 53 
 
 timent in his ' History of England.' Speaking 
 of Dean Colet, he says: — "We see a full re- 
 formation of religious and moral truth accom- 
 plished in his mind before the name of Luther 
 had passed beyond his own threshold." Nay, 
 Protestantism, so far from being a novelty before 
 Luther, was transmitted to that chief among ten 
 thousand, through one of the channels of which 
 I have been speaking. It happened that, while 
 Wiclif was in the full force of his career, a party 
 of Bohemian barons arrived in England, and 
 one of them carried home with him some of the 
 writings of Wiclif. These fell into the hands of 
 John Huss, who at once adopted and promulga- 
 ted the opinions of the English Reformer.* 
 Huss afterwards obtained more of the books of 
 Wiclif, and industriously circulated them, so 
 that when a search was made in Bohemia to 
 destroy them, no less than two hundred were 
 discovered. Luther, in his turn, admired and 
 gave notoriety to the works of Huss. When 
 he was studying at Erfurth, he found, in the 
 library of the convent, a book entitled ' The 
 Sermons of John Huss ;' and, according to his 
 
 * ^neas Silvius, p. 66. 
 
64 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 own account, his astonishment at reading them 
 was incredible : — " I could not comprehend," 
 said he, "for what cause they burnt so great a 
 man, who explained the Scripture with so much 
 gravity and dexterity."* 
 
 There is more reason to suppose that Luther 
 trimmed his lamp with oil drawn from English 
 vessels, than that English Protestants lighted 
 their candle in Germany. One of our most re- 
 nowned Reformers, Latimer, declared, on an oc- 
 casion when his preaching excited much atten- 
 tion, that he had not then read any of the works 
 of Luther. He was asked by a bishop of Ely to 
 deliver a sermon against Luther : " My Lord," 
 replied Latimer, "I am not acquainted with the 
 doctrine of Luther, nor are we permitted here to 
 read his works ; and therefore it were a vain 
 thing for me to refute his doctrine, not under- 
 standing what he hath written, nor what opin- 
 ion he holdeth. Sure I am that I have preached 
 before you this day no man's doctrine, but only 
 the doctrine of God out of the Scriptures : and 
 
 * Luther's Preface to the Works of Huss, cited by Sharon 
 Turner, ' History of England,' vol. v. p. 200. 
 
FOREFATHERS. 65 
 
 if Luther be none otherwise than I have done, 
 there needeth no confutation of his doctrine."* 
 
 I will now, having disposed of the question 
 "Where was Prote&tantism before Luther 1" 
 add a few words more on the oft-repeated 
 calumny, that the English Reformation was 
 engendered in the mind of King Henry VIIL, 
 and that this island never would have protested 
 against Rome had it not been for that licentious 
 and sanguinary tyrant, who, say the Romanists, 
 renounced for himself and his kingdom all con- 
 nexion with Rome, and invented a new religion, 
 because the old one was too holy for him, and 
 because the Pope refused to sanction his divorce 
 of Catherine, and his marriage with Ann Bo- 
 ley n. 
 
 Henry VIH. certainly legalised that which 
 was before unlawful, according to the laws of 
 the kingdom, — namely, resistance of Papal su- 
 premacy ; but he never embraced the Scriptural 
 doctrines of our pure religion, and he persecuted 
 those who did. Prostestantism — I mean the re- 
 ligious movement — owes much to Luther, for 
 hastening the crisis in Germany, but little to 
 
 * Strype'fl * Ecclesiastical Memorials,* vol* iii» p» 370. 
 
 6 
 
gg OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 Henry, who retarded it in England. He may- 
 have given some impulse to the political engine 
 that forced Popery from its commanding posi- 
 tion in this country, but he did nothing to give 
 food to the soul hungering after the bread of 
 life ; he did nothing to promote a more spiritual 
 system ; he struck down the Papal arm because 
 it was raised against himself; but his own ty- 
 ranny would have proved quite as destructive to 
 the seeds of religious improvement, had he lived 
 long enough to prosecute all his despotic objects. 
 Men had begun to think seriously on matters of 
 faith before his reign commenced : and the pro- 
 gress of free inquiry and of Scriptural knowledge 
 advanced in spite of him. We have too long 
 suffered the name of this bad man to press like 
 an incubus upon the bosom of our religion ; let 
 us throw off the weight, and cast it back to the 
 Romanists, whose child he was. Bred up in 
 their system, it was their cardinal, Wolsey, as 
 his adviser, and with their Pope's hcense, as his 
 warrant, that he first harboured the notion of 
 seizing part of that Church property which they 
 now bewail, and converting it to his own pur- 
 poses. Encouraged also by former practices of 
 
FOREFATHERS. 67 
 
 the Romish Church, and knowing that the 
 Popes had been in the habit of sanctioning di- 
 vorces, and granting dispensations for the most 
 revolting marriages, he hugged the burning coal 
 of his hist to his heart, beheving that a Papal 
 bull would enable him to keep it there. It is 
 notorious in history that it was not a religious 
 motive but a political one, which induced the 
 Pope to refuse the boon which Henry solicited. 
 Let the Romanists tlien take back their Henry 
 VIII., whose act of the Six Articles stamps his 
 Anti-Protestant character, and thank him for 
 the attempts he made to stifle our religion, when 
 it grew up faster than he liked. Praise be to 
 Him that dwelleth in Heaven, and who laughs 
 to scorn the kings of the earth and the rulers 
 that take counsel against his Word, the force of 
 truth was too strong even for the most powerful 
 and arbitrary of our monarchs, and all his might 
 could not suppress it. Protestantism was by his 
 time firmly taking root downward, and bearing 
 fruit upward. Its influence was felt in the 
 Church, Romish as it then was ; in the universi- 
 ties ; in the castellated mansions of the great ; in 
 the houses of the citizens ; and in the cottages of 
 
68 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 the peasantry, long before Henry cast his adulter- 
 ous eye on Ann Boleyn, or thought of quarrelling 
 with the Bishop of Rome. It was Wiclif, the rec- 
 tor of Lutterworth, the university professor, the 
 country clergyman, and other humble teachers 
 like himself, who, by their writings, and their 
 preaching, and their example, and not the despotic 
 King, with his tierce decrees, who dispelled the 
 clouds of ignorance, and opened the way to the 
 fountains of eternal life. Henry's hostility was 
 only directed against a power which thwarted 
 his own : theirs, arising out of a principle of 
 faith, and founded on Scripture, was against the 
 images, and the masses, and the indulgences, 
 and the false miracles, and the many interces- 
 sors, robbing Christ of his glory of being the 
 only One, and the blandishment of Popery, 
 which were all injurious to the soul's hope of 
 immortality. 
 
 Theirs was the merit of havings conduced to a 
 sense of personal responsibility in matters of reli- 
 gion, to the rejection of all imaginary help from 
 the meritorious offerings of saints, and to a de- 
 pendence on the atonement and intercession and 
 justification of Jesus Christ alone, which consti- 
 
FOREFATHERS. 69 
 
 tutes the main difference between the devout 
 Romanist and the devout Protestant. And the 
 spirit of Protestantism, when once evoked, was 
 a determined and a moving spirit : it was not to 
 be put down or to be confined. If it was not 
 received in one place, it would go to another ; 
 and wherever it was received, there it abided. 
 Thus it abided in the valleys of Piedmont ; in 
 the Alpine fastnesses of France, Switzerland, 
 and Italy ; in the forests of Bohemia ; and in 
 the vales and homes of Britain. Henry VIII. 
 had nothing to do with the origin, and little 
 with the advance of spiritual Protestantism. 
 
 Section 11. — The Bible, in the vernacular tongue, 
 becomes an engine of wonderful power in the hands 
 of the Protestants. 
 
 In this section I must endeavour to show that 
 it was the study of the Scriptures, and the op- 
 portunities offered to the people of becoming ac- 
 quainted with the Word of God in their own 
 tongue, which brought Protestantism to its ma- 
 turity and full strength in this country as well 
 as in others. 
 
 6* 
 
70 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 " The new translation," as Dr. Lingard testi- 
 fies of Wiclif's Bible, " became an engine of 
 wonderful power ;" and that is why the Romish 
 clergy hate every translation of the Bible into 
 the vulgar tongue, because it is an " engine of 
 wonderful power." It is one before which the 
 Church of Rome never can stand : she has 
 therefore always been averse from the free use 
 of it ; and her abhorrence of it is the reason why 
 we ought the more closely to imitate the wisdom 
 of our Protestant forefathers, and to ply it in 
 every corner of the land. But we, of the pre- 
 sent day, are not as earnest as they were in em- 
 ploying the only weapon against which the ar- 
 mour of Rome is not proof. Whether it is that 
 the very facilities which we enjoy of working 
 this engine have rendered some of us careless 
 and lukewarm, or that the wiles of our adversa- 
 ries have persuaded us that it is illiberal and un- 
 fair to carry this warfare into their camp, cer- 
 tain I am that we are ceasing to fight them, as 
 we should, with our strongest arm. If, before 
 the art of printing was invented, manuscript 
 copies of Scripture, difiicult to read, and expen- 
 sive to purchase, were found to be the surest 
 
FOREFATHERS. 71 
 
 liberators from religious tyranny and corruption, 
 what an extraordinary accession of power might 
 now be put forth, when the press can multiply 
 numbers of the Bible without end, and render 
 the perusal of them perfectly easy ! The in- 
 crease of Protestants was slow before printed 
 books were in circulation, but it was rapid be- 
 yond all calculation as soon as this new accelerat- 
 ing force was apphed ; and this accounts for the 
 sudden appearance of hosts of declared seceders 
 from the Romish Church in all parts of Europe, 
 before the middle of the sixteenth century. 
 
 We trace the simultaneous movement to the 
 same cause — to the circulation of printed copies 
 of Scripture in the vernacular languages of Ger- 
 many, France, and England. It is a most ex- 
 traordinary fact, and points to the directing hand 
 of Providence, that just about the same time 
 three new translations of Scripture appeared 
 among the principal nations of Europe ; viz. 
 Martin Luther's New Testament in German, 
 1522; the Waldensian Olivetan's Bible in 
 French, 1535 ; and Miles Coverdale's Bible in 
 English, in 1535. The effect was almost mi- 
 raculous : people's eyes were opened to the 
 
72 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 truth ; and the Romish clergy, knowing" that 
 the utmost subtleties of human reasoning can- 
 not be successful against Holy Writ, have ever 
 since done all they could to restrict the use of it. 
 They cannot in these days openly denounce the 
 reading of Scripture ; therefore they pretend to 
 call our translations erroneous, and on that 
 ground to dissuade from the use of them. But 
 why does not the Infallible Church give vernacu- 
 lar translations of her own, and pronounce them 
 to be correct interpretations of God's revealed 
 will ] She affirms that she holds the keys of 
 knowledge and revelation : then why does she 
 not unlock the clasps which she has put on the 
 treasures of Scriptural knowledge, and relieve 
 herself of the responsibility of being the deposi- 
 tory of the Oracles of God, and of refusing to 
 speak from the tripod ? 
 
 In the creed of Pope Pius, which I have be- 
 fore cited, she makes her children swear that 
 they will receive no interpretation but hers ; 
 and yet she withholds an interpretation which 
 may be equally accessible to all, and suffers her 
 priests to deal out by piecemeal whatever ex- 
 
FOREFATHERS. 73 
 
 planatioii they may choose to put on the written 
 Word. 
 
 The foUowinsr anecdote will illustrate her in- 
 consistency and weakness on this point. In 
 1825, a Roman Catholic Bishop (Dr. Doyle) 
 was examined before a committee of the House 
 of Lords. He was asked, '' Have you in any 
 instance allowed the circulation of the Bible 
 among the laity without notes]" Dr. Doyle 
 answered, " I do not know that we have." In 
 reply to a previous question, Dr. Doyle had said, 
 " The notes carry in our edition of the Bible no 
 weight, for we do not know the writers of many 
 of them." 
 
 Section 12. — Crcmnier — The first authorised Eng- 
 lish Version of the Bible, and the People's re- 
 ception of it. 
 
 When Cranmer and the fathers of the Re- 
 formed Church in England saw that the time 
 was come to make new efforts, and to engage 
 the body of the people on their side, they re- 
 solved to make that a national concern which 
 had hitherto been the work of hidimduals, — 
 
74 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 namely, the diffasion of Gospel truths ; and 
 they agreed that an authorised English version 
 of the Scriptures should be their first object. 
 But see what difficulties they had to encounter. 
 
 So late as the year 1519, as I have mention- 
 ed before, six men and a woman had been burnt, 
 for only teaching so small a portion of Scripture 
 as the Lord's prayer and ten commandments in 
 the vulgar tongue. The King, Henry VIII, 
 was so little inclined to favour their views, that 
 he had written a book against Luther, the Pro- 
 testant champion in Germany, and had issued 
 proclamations against Tyndal's English transla- 
 tion of the New Testament, published in 1526, 
 declaring that the possession of the book after 
 thirty days would expose the person convicted 
 of havhig it to the penalty of heresy — the 
 flames.* 
 
 All the copies that could be found of Tyndal's 
 Testament had been burnt in Cheapside, as if 
 
 * An old man named Thomas Harding, of Buckingham- 
 shire, was observed to go into the woods, and was seen there 
 reading. This gave rise to suspicion : his house was searched, 
 and a New Testament was found ; the man wgs burnt aHvc, 
 and all who carried a fagot to his stake had an indulgence of 
 forty days granted to them. 
 
FOREFATHERS. 75 
 
 the Romanists were determined to avow that 
 there was a vast contrariety between their doc- 
 trines and those of Scripture. But their ani- 
 mosity did not stop here: in 1530 a pubhc no- 
 tice announced that the King and his bishops 
 did not think any Enghsh version of Scripture 
 was wanted. Patiently, therefore, were the 
 friends of Scripture-reading obliged to watch 
 their opportunities before they could openly put 
 their intention in execution. While Wolsey 
 lived, tbere was no hope of any public recogni- 
 tion of the duty of putting English translations 
 of the Bible into the hands of the people. That 
 Cardinal Archbishop, who held by Papal dispen- 
 sation the revenues of four bishoprics* at one 
 time, hated even the art of printing, because, 
 said he, "it will bring down the honour of the 
 priesthood, by making the people as wise as 
 they." But the work of preparation was going 
 on in the hearts and in the secret chambers of 
 the more faithful soldiers of the Cross. Cran- 
 mer was studiously qualifying himself to fight 
 the battle of truth : he kept large folio volumes 
 
 * Some shoit time ago it was stated in Parliament that plu- 
 ralities were first held by the Protestant cleVjg}^ ! 
 
76 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 for notes, in which he marked down the best of 
 the various interpretations and comments on 
 Scripture, which he had read in the Fathers and 
 eminent theologians of tlie Church ; and when 
 the season appointed for the great crisis arrived, 
 he was ready with his arguments for the pubU- 
 cation of a revised translation. These he plead- 
 ed with so much force before the Convocation of 
 his province, in December, 1534, that it was 
 agreed to petition the King to grant a commis- 
 sion to provide an amended translation of the 
 Bible in the English tongue, Henry comphed, 
 and on the 4th of October, 1535, Coverdale's 
 version (which when revised was afterwards 
 called Cranmer's Bible) was published in foho, 
 to the great joy of the people, and to the confu- 
 sion of the Romanists; one of whom, Bishop 
 Stokesly, was heard to declare, " I wonder that 
 Cranmer should thus abuse the people, in giving 
 them liberty to read the Scriptures, w^hich does 
 nothing else but infect them with heresy." 
 
 There are a few anecdotes relating to the 
 publication of this first authorised translation of 
 the Bible, which are well worth recording, as 
 demonstrative of the temper in which our an- 
 
TTOREFATHERS. 77 
 
 cestors received the blessing, and the use they 
 made of it: A command was issued that every 
 Church should be provided with one of these 
 foHo Bibles. It was done ; bat the anxiety of 
 the people, of such as could, to read the pre- 
 cious volume, and of such as could not, to han- 
 dle and turn over the pages of that book, which 
 they had been in the habit of regarding as a 
 thing of mystery and prohibition, was so great, 
 that it was found necessary to chain them for 
 security to the desks. In a country church I 
 have seen the very Bible and the very chain 
 preserved as relics, which three hundred years 
 ago attested the popular feeling on this subject. 
 But so deeply rooted were the old prejudices of 
 the governing authorities, that it was four years 
 after the Bible was placed in the churches, be- 
 fore the King could be persuaded to revoke the 
 decrees which forbade his subjects to have it in 
 their private possession. At last they were gra- 
 tiously permitted by royal license to purchase Bi- 
 bles for their own reading at home. Then it 
 was that every body who could afford it bought 
 a copy of the Scriptures : such as could not buy 
 the whole, purchased detached passages. A 
 7 
 
75 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 cart-load of hay was known to be given for a 
 few chapters of St. Paul's Epistles. And many- 
 there were, who, having learned to read in their 
 old age, that they n^ight have the pleasure of 
 poring over the written Word, and reading with 
 their own eyes the wonderful things of God, ex- 
 claimed with the prophet, " Thy words were 
 found, and I did eat them ; and thy word was 
 unto me the joy and the rejoicing of my heart." 
 The crosses and public places often presented 
 the moving sight of men, women, and children, 
 crowding round a reader who was rehearsing 
 tbe songs of Zion, and the prophecies of the 
 seers of Israel, or the tender discourses of the 
 Redeemer of mankind. 
 
 One poor man, named John Marbeck, was so 
 desirous of making himself the master of a Bi- 
 ble, that he determined to write one out, because 
 he had not money enough to buy one ; and 
 when he had accomphshed that laborious task, 
 he set about the still more trying toil of making 
 a Concordance. 
 
 " They would hide the forbidden treasure un- 
 der the floors of their houses,'** says Mr. Blunt, 
 in hia admirable ' Sketch of the Reformation,' 
 
FOREFATHERS. 70 
 
 which every body should read, " and put their 
 Hves in peril, rather than forego the book they 
 desired ; they would sit up all night, their doors 
 being shut for fear of surprise, reading or hear- 
 ing others read the Word of God ; they would 
 bury themselves in the woods, and there con- 
 verse with it in solitude ; they would tend their 
 herds in the fields, and still steal an hour for 
 drinking in the good tidings of great joy." 
 
 Such being the avidity with which the Scrip- 
 tures were cherished, let the reader imagine the 
 consternation which overwhelmed the pious of 
 this country, when the capricious Henry rever- 
 sed his former decrees in favour of biblical learn- 
 ing, and threatened his people with imprison- 
 ment, confiscation, and fire, if any, below the 
 privileged classes, should presume|to search the 
 Scriptures. This terrible stretch of royal pre- 
 rogative was confirmed by Act of Parliament, in 
 1543; and it seemed like a seal of human folly 
 and infatuation, forced upon a tyrant king and 
 a subservient senate, to refute future calumnies 
 against Protestantism, and to be handed down 
 to posterity as proof most positive that the Re- 
 formation was carried on, not by the cold me- 
 
80 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 chanism of State politics, but by the fervent zeal 
 and undaunted devotion of holy men, in spite of 
 kings and parliaments. Our Protestant forefa- 
 thers would have been crushed, and their names 
 and their labours clean-forgotten, if the will of some 
 of their temporal and spiritual rulers could have 
 been accomplished. The proclamation of 1543 
 set forth that " No books were to be printed 
 about religion without the King's consent ; none 
 might read the Scripture in any open assembly, 
 or expound it, but he who was licensed by the 
 King or his ordinary. Ever}^ nobleman or gentle- 
 man misfht cause the Bible to be read to him in 
 or about his house. Every merchant who was 
 a housekeeper, might also read it ; but no wo- 
 man, no artificers, apprentices, journeymen, 
 serving-men under the degree of yeoman, and 
 no husbandman, nor labourer, might read it." 
 
 Such were the struggles of Protestantism ! 
 Nearly two hundred years after Wiclif 's transla- 
 tion first appeared, even after the authorized ver- 
 sion was published and freely circulated, the 
 King, who is falsely described by our opponents 
 as the nursing father of our faith, strove, by 
 every means with which absolute pow^er invest- 
 
FOREFATHERS. 81 
 
 ed him, to stifle the iafant religion, which he is 
 said to have engendered. 
 
 There is a curious document still in existence, 
 which shows what was felt by the humble and 
 lowly Christians of that day, who were thought 
 too degraded in intellect to be permitted to read 
 the Bible. It is in the form of a note made by 
 a shepherd in the spare leaf of a book, which he 
 bought after the passing of the Act above refer- 
 red to: — At Oxford, in the year 1546, brought 
 down to Scynbury by John Darly, price \4d. 
 When I kept Mr. Letymer's sheep, I bought this 
 book, w^hen the Testament was abrogated, that 
 shepherds might not read it. I pray God amend 
 that blindness. Writ by Robert Williams, keep- 
 ing sheep upon Scynbury Hill, 1546." 
 
 In the midst of the storms which were raised 
 against Protestants, at different periods of Hen- 
 ry's reign, it is a marvel how Cranmer, even 
 after he was made archbishop, escaped Henry's 
 wrath. 
 
 He was in a high place, and could not be un- 
 observed. He certainly owed his safety to that 
 extraordinary inconsistency and fitfulness of the 
 
 King, who persecuted Protestants and Roman- 
 
 7* 
 
82 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 ists as the humour seized him — who hked to 
 day what he hated yesterday, and whom a wit- 
 ticism or a ready saying would frequently divert 
 from his most violent purposes. A remarkable 
 instance of this caprice, and a proof that the 
 highest station was no protection against King 
 Henry's hatred of heresy, and jealousy of those 
 who were Protestants beyond his Protestantism, 
 is to be found in the well-known anecdote of 
 Queen Catharine Parr, Henry's last wife. He 
 had determined to bring her to trial for her 
 opinions — for having discussed religious ques- 
 tions too freely with himself. Articles of accu- 
 sation were drawn up, and the Chancellor was 
 at the door with the guard who were to arrest 
 the Queen — when happily she told her husband 
 that she had carried her disputations to an ex- 
 treme point, to draw him into discourse and to 
 excite his interest. "Is it sol" said the king, 
 " then we are friends again ;" and the Chancel- 
 lor was indignantly driven from the presence, 
 with cuffs and kicks from the royal hand and 
 foot, for his officious meddling. 
 
FOREFATHERS. 83 
 
 Section 13. — The Protestant Cause triumphs, by 
 virtue of its own principles, rather than by the 
 aid of the ruling powers. 
 
 These statements will satisfy you that Pro- 
 testanism, in the right sense of the word, had 
 but little help from the government of the coun- 
 try, until the reign of Edward VI. ; and that 
 the contest between it and. Romanism in every 
 other respect, except the Pope's supremacy, was 
 carried on in the face of adverse rulers, by the 
 pious few. The dissolute manners of the Ro- 
 mish clergy had excited the disgust of the peo- 
 ple: the fires which were kindled in every quar- 
 ter, to consume those who ventured to differ 
 from the religion of the State, made that reli- 
 gion more and more odious to them : the attempts 
 to deprive them of the Scriptures assured them 
 that Romanism and the Word of God were at 
 variance — else why such pains to keep them in 
 ignorance of it 1 — and the reading and hearing 
 Scripture, as occasion offered, confirmed them in 
 their suspicions that the practices and the pre- 
 tensions of the Church of Rome could not bear 
 
94 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 the test of the Gospel. Having learnt what 
 was right, the people determined to practise it, 
 and without waiting for any order from an Ec- 
 clesiastical Court or a Minister of State, the pa- 
 rochial authorities began to pull down the images 
 of saints which were erected in the churches, 
 and to efface the pictures painted on the walls, 
 substituting texts of Scripture in the place of 
 the latter. Henry VIII.'s mandate for the re- 
 moval of superstitious objects amounted to no- 
 thing — for who dared to determine what were 
 superstitious 1 The minister and churchwardens 
 of a parish in London led the way, by clearing 
 their church of every thing that was in viola- 
 tion of the Second Commandment ; and Ridley, 
 afterwards Bishop of London, had the honour of 
 preaching a sermon which " raised a great heat 
 over England." Hitherto the government of 
 Edward VL was silent and passive on this sub- 
 ject ; and even then, the first injunctions which 
 were published only cautiously directed that 
 " such images as the curates knew were abused 
 by pilgrimages or offerings to them, should be 
 taken down." The Protector's letter for the 
 entire removal of images did not come until it 
 was demanded by public opinion. 
 
FOREFATHERS. g5 
 
 Men's mindsj enlightened by degrees, could 
 no longer tolerate the impiety of such images — 
 for instance, as that which was meant to repre- 
 sent the Holy Trinity. It depictured the Father 
 Eternal as an old man, with a triple crown, and 
 rays about his head, — the Son as a young man 
 with a crown and rays, — and the Holy Ghost as 
 a dove sitting over their heads : to complete the 
 profanation, the Virgin was placed between the 
 Father and the Son, in conformity with the doc- 
 trine of the Assmnption. 
 
 Thus slowly did the State permit the with- 
 drawing of offensive objects from the eyes of the 
 religious. In like manner the Acts of Parlia- 
 ment, relating to the administration of the Sa- 
 crament of the Lord's Supper, and the abolition 
 of private masses, were not passed until the 
 pulpits had long resounded with exposures of the 
 doctrine of transubstantiation. 
 
 The Communion Bill was not agreed to until 
 20th December, 1547. It was twelve months 
 more before the ritual and public services were 
 weeded of their most unscriptural and fabulous 
 deformities ; and the entire reformation of the 
 Church ceremonies cannot be said to have been 
 
8G OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 effected till many years after the complaints of 
 the devout and the reflecting had been loudly 
 uttered in the ears of their rulers. The autho- 
 rities seemed still inclined to check rather than 
 hasten the march of improvement. A procla- 
 mation against those who ^Hnnovated and per- 
 suaded from the old accustomed rites''^ was issued 
 even in King Edward's reign : in fact, every 
 removal of yokes too heavy to bear proceeded 
 with equal slowness and deliberation. The 
 clergy themselves took the liberty to marry before 
 the Acts of Parliament, in 1548 and 1552, were 
 passed for their relief, and legalized their mar- 
 riages. These things show that the separation of 
 the people of England from the Church of Rome, 
 and the renouncement of her religious practices 
 and impositions, did not emanate with the gov- 
 ernment either of Henry VIII., or of his succes- 
 ors Edward and Elizabeth, but that they origi- 
 nated in the Protestant principles which kept 
 gaining strength from year to year, as they were 
 more universally promulgated and better ex- 
 pounded. It was a little spark and a gradual 
 ignition, and not a sudden conflagration raised 
 by another Nero, which lighted up among the 
 
FOREFATHERS. 87 
 
 people of this realm, and consumed the fabrics 
 of Rome. The old constructions, which it had 
 taken a thousand years to build up, could not 
 be demolished at once, and we behold the hand 
 of God in the retardation of this religious move- 
 ment ; for if our cause is now weakened in the 
 eyes of the inconsiderate, and we are now taunt- 
 ed with the reproach that it was kingly tyranny 
 w^hich made Protestants of our forefathers, what 
 w^ould have been the effect of the argument had 
 there really been the slightest truth in the asser- 
 tion ? Thanks be to the Most High, the con- 
 viction came first, and the law afterwards. The 
 rejection of Romanism was not legalized till 
 thousands of books had been written, printed, 
 and circulated against its delusions; till thou- 
 sands of sermons had been heard and preached 
 against its errors, and till the suffrages of men 
 were collected in favour of a restitution of the 
 primitive doctrines of the Gospel. " If," said a 
 sober-minded reasoner on this subject, "amidst 
 BO much that is admirable in the character and 
 conduct of the first Reformers, we might be 
 permitted to allot the meed of praise to any par- 
 ticular part, I should have no hesitation in as- 
 
88 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 signing it to that singular moderation and dis- 
 cernment which distinguished the Reformation 
 from all other revolutions, which overcoming the 
 common infirmities of our nature, by which men 
 are apt to run from one extreme into its opposite, 
 controlled the spirit of innovation in the mo- 
 ment of reform ; rejected nothing without ex- 
 amination ; retained nothing without authority; 
 and when it abjured the usurpations of the 
 Church of Rome, discarded only its corruptions, 
 and left all that had the stamp of Christianity 
 behind, — like the fire whicii separates and con- 
 sumes the dross, but preserves and refines all that 
 is pure in the ore."* 
 
 The active struggle in this country may be 
 said to have commenced about the year 1360, 
 when Wiclif first began to lecture and to preach 
 against the clergy of Rome, and to have achiev- 
 ed its object the year after Elizabeth's accession 
 — say 1560. For two hundred years, therefore, 
 our Protestant forefathers were publicly contend- 
 ing and suffering, before the kingdom experienced 
 the full benefit of their devoted efforts. During the 
 
 * Taylor's " Answer to the Cluestion, Why are you a 
 Churchman ?" 
 
FOREFATHERS. 89 
 
 last fifty 5^ears of the contest, from the heginning' 
 of Henry's reign in 1 509, to the termination of 
 Mary's in 1559, the perseverance, the learning, 
 the diligence, the piety, and the intrepidity of 
 those faithful servants of God, were fully mani- 
 fested in patience and tribulation. At one time 
 they had to bear the reproaches of those among 
 whom they lived, and the spoiling of their goods, 
 and bonds and imprisonments, and cruel mock- 
 ings. At another time they wandered in deserts 
 and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the 
 earth ; and oftentimes, when they thought that 
 their work was done, and that they had triumph- 
 ed over prejudices and false reasoning, and ma- 
 lignant opposition, and tyrannical power, they 
 had to fight the battle over again, and to submit 
 to new trials, disappointments, and sufferings. 
 Ah ! little do we think at what a sacrifice of all 
 which is dear to man, our fathers and forerunners 
 in the faith bought for us the privileges which 
 we now enjoy, and enabled us freely to discuss 
 the sacred subjects, which they could not whis- 
 per to themselves but at the jeopardy of their 
 lives. Take the example of Cranmer only, 
 whom, much as we admire, we do not profess to 
 8 
 
90 OUR PRO'lESTANT 
 
 call perfect in his generation. Every bitter 
 drug which man can take, he had to swallow : 
 he was perpetually in peril of his life : w^hen he 
 stood before Henry VIII. , the sw^ord hung by a 
 thread over his head, even in his momentc of 
 greatest favour. He had first to reason himself 
 out of long-cherished opinions ; he had then to 
 contest the point with his own order. He had 
 patiently to watch his seasons and opportunities: 
 he had to see himself dashed from the pinnacle 
 of his hopes, at the moment when he thought 
 he had reached it. He had to bear the blame 
 of severities inflicted on those w^hom he knew to 
 be undeserving of them, but which he could not 
 avert. He had to do things from which his 
 heart revolted ; and he expired in tortures at the 
 stake — a penitent and a martyr, with his mind 
 agonized by a sense of his ow^n defects, and his 
 body slowly burning in the flames, — so slowly, 
 that he watched over, and even exulted in the 
 consumption of that right hand of his, which 
 had oflfended him by signing an act of recanta- 
 tion in an hour of weakness. Oh, call to re- 
 membrance the former days, in which, after 
 your Protestant fathers were illuminated, they 
 
FOREFATHERS. 01 
 
 endured a great fight of afflictionsj and pray that 
 you may have strength and grace to persevere 
 in the Holy Faith which they bequeathed to 
 you. 
 
 Section 14. Anecdotes illustrative of the charac- 
 ter^ doctrines^ and conduct of our Protestant lu- 
 minaries — WicUf Cranmer^ Latimer^ Jewels 
 Rowland Taylor^ Bernard Gilpin. 
 
 Wlien Wichf was attacked by an alarming 
 sickness, brought on by his incessant labour and 
 anxiety in defence of the truth, his adversaries 
 thought it a favourable opportunity to endeavour 
 to wiring from his supposed weakness that which 
 they knew it to be impossible to extort from him 
 in his more calm and collected hour. An em- 
 bassy of the mendicant order, begging friars, 
 was deputed to intrude themselves into his 
 chamber, and some of the authorities of the day 
 lent their countenance and tiieir presence to the 
 same ungenerous attempt to bully and intimidate 
 the man whose last moments they hoped were 
 approaching. They found him stretched upon 
 his bed, faint and in anguish. Thev surrounded 
 
93 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 his pallet ; some preached, some threatened, 
 and all invoked him by the powers of earth and 
 hell to recant all that he had said or written 
 against them, inasmuch as he had but a short 
 time to live. The recumbent saint heard them 
 in silence, until they had uttered all that they 
 had to say : he then requested to be raised up 
 on his pillows, and, gathering up his strength, 
 he exclaimed, with a firm voice, " I shall not die 
 but live, and again declare the works of the 
 Lord, and protest against your evil deeds." 
 
 His words were Heaven-inspired, and pro- 
 phetically true : his health was restored, and 
 Wiclif was spared many years to uphold the 
 sacred cause of which he was the champion, 
 and to tear the mask from hypocrisy and infi- 
 delity. 
 
 While Cranmer was in prosperity, he had 
 so much of the milk of human kindness, and of 
 Christian forgiveness in his disposition, that it 
 was said of him, — " The surest way to secure 
 the good offices of the archbishop is to do him 
 some notable displeasure." His house was the 
 asylum, not of the learned and distinguished 
 stranger only, but of many of the poor and the 
 
FOREFATHERS. 93 
 
 distressed. On one occasion it was converted 
 into an hospital for sick and wounded soldiers, 
 who were returning home from France through 
 Kent. He kept a surgeon and physician to at- 
 tend them ; and when they were well enough 
 to depart, he furnished them with money for 
 their journey. At the very summit of his gran- 
 deur, his habits of study were the same as those 
 which distinguished him in humble life. He 
 usually rose at five, and devoted the first four 
 hours of the day to his books, his compositions, 
 or his devotions ; the three next were set apart 
 for public business. He dined at twelve, return- 
 ed to his literary labours at five, and, with a 
 short interval of recreation, continued at them 
 till his hour of rest for the night. By these 
 regular habits, his accumulations of knowledge 
 were so great, that it was difficult to propose 
 any question to him out of Scripture, general 
 theology, or canon law, which he could not an- 
 swer ; and he was always able to support his 
 opinions by reference to the best authorities. 
 
 The great extent of his learning, and the 
 acuteness of his reasoning, were made so mani- 
 fest at his trial, when he was arraigned before 
 8* 
 
94 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 the tribunal which condemned him, that his 
 judges were constrained to silence him. " If 
 you will adduce a proof of the corporeal pre- 
 sence in the Eucharist, out of any one divine 
 who lived within a thousand years of our Sa- 
 viour's resurrection," said Cranmer, " I will con- 
 sent to the Romish doctrine." — " We come to 
 examine you, and not to permit you to examine 
 us," was the answer ; which evaded, but could 
 not refute his argument. 
 
 When sentence of degradation and excommu- 
 nication was passed upon him, he was delivered 
 over to the secular arm, with this cruel mockery 
 of mercy and justice : — " And w^e beseech Her 
 Majesty, with all the affection possible, by the 
 love of God, and by our regard for piety and 
 mercy, and by the intervention of our prayers, 
 not to bring upon this wretched man any peril of 
 dismemberment or death." 
 
 Extracts from a Letter , written by a Roman CathO' 
 lie, who was a witness of Cranmer^s Martyrdom. 
 
 " On Saturday last, being the 21st of March, 
 was his day appointed to die ; and, because the 
 
FOREFATHERS. 95 
 
 morning was much rainy, the sermon appointed 
 by Dr. Cole, to be made at the stake, was made 
 in St. Mary's Church ; where was prepared, 
 over against the pulpit, an high place for him, 
 that all the people might see him. And, when 
 he had ascended it, he kneeled down and prayed, 
 weeping tenderly, which moved a great number 
 to tears that had conceived an assured hope of 
 his conversion and repentance. ***** 
 
 " When Dr. Cole had ended his sermon, he 
 desired all the people to pray for him — Mr. 
 Cranmer kneeling down with them, and praying 
 for himself. I think there was never such a 
 number so earnestly praying together ; for they 
 that hated him before, now loved him for his 
 conversion, and hope of continuance. They 
 that loved him before could not so suddenly hate 
 him, having hope of his confession again of his 
 fall. ************ 
 
 " So love and hope increased devotion on 
 every side. I shall not need, for the time of 
 sermon, to describe his behaviour, his sorrowful 
 countenance, his heavy cheer, his face bedewed 
 with tears ; sometimes casting them down to 
 the earth for shame — to be brief, an image of 
 
96 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 sorrow ; the dolour of his heart bursting out at 
 his eyes in plenty of tears ; retaining ever a 
 quiet, grave behaviour, which increased the pity 
 in men's hearts, that they unfeignedly loved 
 him, hoping it had been his repentance for his 
 transgression and error. I shall not need, I say, 
 to point it out unto you ; you can much better 
 imagine it yourself. 
 
 " When praying was done, he stood up, and, 
 having leave to speak, said, ' Good people, I had 
 intended indeed to desire you to pray for me. * 
 And now will I pray for myself, as I could best 
 devise for mine own comfort, and say the prayer 
 word for word, as I have here Avritten down,' — 
 And he read it standing; and then kneeled 
 down, and said the Lord's Prayer ; and all the 
 people on their knees devoutly praying with 
 him. 
 
 "His prayer was thus : ' O Father of Heaven ; 
 O Son of God, Redeemer of the World ; O Holy 
 Ghost, proceeding from them both, three Persons 
 and one God, have mercy upon me, most wretch- 
 ed caitiff and miserable simier. I who have 
 offended both Heaven and earth, and more 
 grievously than any tongue can express, whithei^ 
 
FOREFATHERS. 97 
 
 then may I go, or whither should I fly for suc- 
 cour ? To Heaven I may be ashamed to hft up 
 mme eyes ; and in earth I find no refuge. 
 What shall I then do ? Shall I despair ? God 
 forbid ! O good God, thou art merciful, and 
 refusest none that come unto Thee for succour. 
 
 " ' To thee therefore do I run. To thee do I 
 humble myself, saying, O Lord God, my sins be 
 great, but yet have mercy upon me for thy mercy. 
 O God the Son, thou wast not made man : this 
 great mystery was not wrought for few or small 
 offences, nor thou didst not give thy Son unto 
 death, O God the Father, for our little and small 
 sins only, but for all the greatest sins of the 
 world, so that the sinner return unto thee with 
 a penitent heart, as I do here at this present. 
 Wherefore have mercy upon me, O Lord, whose 
 property is always to have mercy : for although 
 my sins be great, yet thy mercy is greater. I 
 crave nothing, O Lord, for mine own merits, 
 but for thy name's sake, that it may be glorified 
 thereby, and for thy dear Son Jesus Christ's 
 sake. And now therefore. Our Father, which 
 art in Heaven, &c. &c.' ****** 
 
 " Then rising, he said, ' Every man desire th. 
 
98 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 good people, at the time of their deaths, to give 
 some good exhortation, that others may remem- 
 ber after their deaths, and be the better thereby. 
 So I beseech God grant me grace, that I may 
 speak something at this my departing, whereby 
 God may be glorified, and you edified. * * 
 And now I come to the great thing that troubleth 
 my conscience more than any other thing that 
 ever I said or did in my hfe — -and that is the set- 
 ting abroad of writings contrary to the truth 
 [alluding to his recantation.] * * * * * 
 And forasmuch as my hand offended in writing 
 contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall 
 first be punished ; for if I may come to the fire, 
 it shall be first burned.' * * * * * * 
 
 " Coming to the stake with a cheerful coun- 
 tenance and willing mind, he put off his gar- 
 ments with haste, and stood upright in his shirt: 
 and a bachelor of divinity, named Elye, of Bra- 
 zen-nose College, laboured to convert him to his 
 former recantation, with the two Spanish friars. 
 
 " And the bishop answered, (showing his 
 hand,) 'This is the hand that wrote it, and 
 therefore shall it sufifer first punishment.' 
 
 " Fire being now put to him, he stretched out 
 
FOREFATHERS. 99 
 
 his right hand, and thrust it into the flame, and 
 held it there a good space, before the fire came 
 to any other part of his body ; where his hand 
 was seen of every man sensibly burning, crying 
 with a loud voice, *This hand hath offended.' 
 As soon as the fire got up, he was very soon 
 dead, never stirring or crying all the while. 
 
 " His patience in the torment, his coinage in 
 dying, if it had been taken either for the Glory 
 of God, the wealth of his country, or the testi- 
 mony of truth, as it was for a pernicious error 
 and subversion of true religion, I could worthily 
 have commended the example, and matched it 
 with the fame of any father of ancient time •; 
 but, seeing that not the death, but the cause 
 and quarrel thereof, commendeth the sufi^erer, I 
 cannot but much dispraise his obstinate stub- 
 bornness and sturdiness in dying, and specially in 
 so evil a cause. Surely his death much grieved 
 every man ; but not after one sort. Some pitied 
 to see his body so tormented with the fire raging 
 upon the silly carcass, that counted not of the 
 folly; others, that passed not much of the body, 
 lamented to see him spill his soul, wretchedly, 
 without redemption, to be plagued for ever. His 
 
100 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 friends sorrowed for love ; his enemies for pity ; 
 strangers for a common kind of humanity, where- 
 by we are bound one to another. Tims I have 
 enforced myself, for your sake, to discourse this 
 heavy narration. Contrary to my mind, and, 
 being more than half weary, I make a short end, 
 Avishing you a quieter hfe, with less honour, and 
 easier death, with your praise, the 23d of March. 
 Yours, J. A."* 
 
 Latimer was one of the earliest and most 
 determined opponents of Romanism during the 
 most perilous times of the reign of Henry VIII. 
 In his Sermons of the Card, as they were called, 
 which he preached at Cambridge, in 1529, he 
 began to declare his opinions. The preachers 
 of that day used to select some pastime or topic 
 of the season, on which they would construct 
 their discourses. At Christmas, Latimer fixed 
 on cards as his subject; he would take the heart, 
 he said, for his trump, and teach his hearers to 
 serve God with their heart, and not to rely on 
 external and unfruitful ceremonies. After some 
 explanatory observations, he proceeded: — '*Now 
 I trust you know what your card means : let ua 
 
 ♦ Memorial of Cranmer, Strype, vol. i. b. iii. p. 552. 
 
FOREFATHERS. IQl 
 
 see how we can play with the same. Whenso- 
 ever you go and make your oblation to God, ask 
 of yourselves this question, Who art thou 1 The 
 answer, as you know, is, I am a Christian man ! 
 Then you must again ask of yourselves, what 
 Christ requires of a Christian man 1 Christ 
 will not accept our oblation if it be of another 
 man's substance ; [in allusion to the Popish 
 doctrine of the meritorious works, offerings, and 
 intercession of the saints,] it must be our own." 
 In his sermon on the Plough, which was deliver- 
 ed in London some years afterwards, he express- 
 ed himself much more boldly and plainly. 
 '' There is one," he exclaimed, " who is the 
 most diligent prelate and preacher in all Eng- 
 land : it is the devil. He is never out of his 
 diocese, and never from his cure : he is ever in 
 his parish ; he keeps residence at all times ; he 
 is ever at his plough ; and his office is to hinder 
 religion, to set up idolatry, to teach all manner 
 of Popery. He is ready enough to put forth his 
 plough, to devise as many means as can be to 
 deface and obscure God's glory. Where his 
 plough is going, away with books, and up with 
 candles ; away with Bibles, and up with beads ; 
 9 
 
102 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 away with the light of the Gospel, and up with 
 the light of candles — yea, at noon-day. Where 
 he, the devil, is resident, up with superstition 
 and idolatry, censing, painting of images, ashes, 
 holy water, and new services of man's invent- 
 ing ; as though man could invent a better way 
 to honour God than God himself hath appoint- 
 ed. Away with clothing the naked, the poor, 
 and the impotent ; up with decking of images, 
 and gay garnishing of stocks and stones. Up 
 with man's traditions; down with God's tradi- 
 tions and his most holy Word. And all things 
 must be done in Latin ; there must be nothing 
 but Latin : God's Word may in nowise be trans^ 
 lated into English." 
 
 When King Henry issued a proclamation for- 
 bidding the use of the Scriptures, Latimer shrunk 
 not from the path of his duty, dangerous as it 
 was, but addressed a letter of remonstrance to 
 the angry monarch, in which he reminded him 
 that those who had recommended him ^' to make 
 it treason for any to have the Scripture in Eng- 
 lish, were they who blinded his people with their 
 customs, and their ceremonies, and their glosses, 
 and punished them with cursings, excommuni- 
 
FOREFATHERS. 103 
 
 cations, and other corruptions. Therefore, may 
 it please your Grace, to return to the golden rule 
 of our Master and Saviour, Jesus Christ, which 
 is this, ' by their fruits ye shall know them.' 
 They that persecute are void, and wholly with- 
 out truth ; not caring for the clear light, which 
 is come into the world, and which shall show 
 forth every man's works : and they whose works 
 are naught dare not come to this light, but go 
 about to stop it and hinder it, hindering as 
 much as they may the Holy Scripture from 
 being read in our mother tongue : saj/ing it 
 would cause heresy and insurrection ; and so 
 they persuade, at least they would fain persuade,, 
 your Grace to keep it back. And as concerning 
 your last proclamation, prohibiting such books, 
 the very chief counsellers of it were those whose 
 evil living and choked hypocrisy those books 
 disclosed. And as touching the men who were 
 lately punished for these books, there is no man 
 that can lay any word or deed against them, 
 that should sound to the breaking any of your 
 Grace's laws ; this only excepted, if it be yours, 
 and not rather theirs. Wherefore, gracious King, 
 remember yourself ; have pity upon your soul, 
 
104 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 and think that the day is even at hand when 
 you shall give account of your office, and of the 
 blood which hath been shed with your sword." 
 This letter was written in December, 1530. 
 
 Latimer^ s Account of his former Opinions and Con- 
 version. 
 
 " I thought, in times past, that the Pope could 
 have delivered from purgatory, at his pleasure, 
 with a word of his mouth : now I abhor my su- 
 perstitious foolishness. I thought in times past 
 that divers images of saints could have holpen 
 me : now I know that one can help as well as 
 another. It were too long to tell you what 
 blindness I have been in, and how long it were 
 ere I could forsake such folly, it was so incorpo- 
 rated in me : but by continual prayer, continual 
 study of Scripture, and oft communing with men 
 of more right judgment, God hath delivered me." 
 
 The man who was so honest in the avowal 
 of his sentiments, was ready to suffer for them. 
 He resigned his bishopric of Worcester, after the 
 Act of the Six Bloody Articles were passed, in 
 1539, rather than hold preferment under a sys- 
 
FOREFATHERS. 105 
 
 tern of State religion, wherein such iinscriptural 
 and violent measures were adopted. When 
 Mary came to the throne, he was a very old 
 man, and living in retirement, but he was soon 
 singled out for persecution, and committed to 
 prison. In his place of confinement, he put the 
 following declarations to paper : " In my prison 
 I have read the Testament over seven times, but 
 I could never find in the institution of the sa- 
 crament either flesh or bones, or the word tran- 
 substantiation. You have changed the most 
 holy communion into a wicked and horrible 
 sacrifice of idolatry, and you deny to the lay 
 people the cup, which is directly against God's 
 mstitution, which saith, ' Drink ye all of this ;' 
 and where you should preach the benefit of 
 Christ's death to the people, you speak to the 
 wall in a foreign tongue." 
 
 Latimer perished in the flames in the year 
 1555, with Ridley, Bishop of London. At the 
 last, his body seemed to acquire new strength 
 with his indomitable spirit, and, to the astonish- 
 ment of the spectators, he was seen to lift him- 
 self up, and to stand erect at the stake. When 
 the fagots were blazmg, he stretched forth his 
 9* 
 
106 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 arms to the fire, and exclaimed, in a loud and 
 cheerful voice, " Brother Ridley, be of good 
 comfort ; we shall this day light such a candle 
 in England; as, by God's grace, shall never be 
 put out." 
 
 The immortal fame of Jewel, Bishop of Sa- 
 lisbury, does not rest, like that of the martyrs, 
 whose names I have just recited, on his dying 
 testimony at the stake, but on evidence by which 
 he yet speaketh — his * Apology for the Church 
 of England,' one of the noblest specimens of 
 theological reasoning which Protestant ever put 
 forth. His renown is perpetuated also in the 
 record of his controversy with Harding. " I 
 defy you," said he, in that dispute, " to find Ro- 
 manism in the Bible ; I defy you to find it in 
 the six first centuries ; I defy you to uphold it 
 by the authority of the earliest interpreters of 
 the Bible ; I defy you to establish it by the con- 
 sent of those who, in primitive times, bore wit- 
 ness to the truth." 
 
 Jewel was born in the year 1522; and while 
 he was yet a stripling he gave such an earnest 
 of his future character, that it was predicted of 
 him by his tutor, " Surely St. Paul's Cross will 
 
FOREFATHERS. 107 
 
 one day ring of this boy." His early habits of 
 study were so severe, that he imposed the duty 
 upon himself of rising at four in the morning, 
 and of poring over his books for the greatest part 
 of eighteen, hours every day. Abstemiousness 
 and self-denial, and the most exemplary moral 
 conduct, distinguished his university career at 
 Oxford as much as his profound learning, and 
 wrung from the Popish dean of his college an 
 expression of approbation, highly complimen- 
 tary, — " I should love thee. Jewel, if thou wert 
 not a Zuinglian. Thou art an heretic in thy 
 faith, but certainly an angel in thy life." This 
 proves that while he was yet a very young man, 
 he made a public profession of opinions hostile 
 to the tenets of Romanism. But, " angel as he 
 was in his life," he fell in a moment of weak- 
 ness, and subscribed to a paper containing the 
 leading articles of the Church whose doctrines 
 he abominated. He soon shook off the tram- 
 mels imposed on him by the terrors of a cruel 
 death, and fled from his country to escape both 
 the allurements and the threats of the dominant 
 Church in England, when Queen Mary govern- 
 ed the realm. At Frankfort he publicly ac- 
 
108 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 knowledged the guilt of his apostac}'', and de- 
 clared from the Church Pulpit, "- that it was his 
 abject and cowardly mind, and faint heart, that 
 made his weak hand commit that wickedness." 
 From this time to his death, Jewel continued one 
 of the most stedfast advocates and brightest 
 ornaments of the Protestant faith. " It is an 
 easy thing," said one of his biographers, " for 
 those who were never tried, to censure the frailty 
 of those that have truckled for some time under 
 the shock of a mighty temptation. But let such 
 remember St. Paul's advice : ' Let him that 
 standeth take heed lest he fall.' This great 
 man's fall shall ever be my lesson ; and if his 
 glittering Jewel were thus clouded and foiled, 
 God be merciful to me a sinner." 
 
 When a change of things enabled Jewel to 
 return home, he took a lead in the discussions 
 and proceedings which finally placed the Re- 
 formed Church of England on the high place, 
 among Christian churches, which she now occu- 
 pies ; and it was at St. Paul's Cross, as the in- 
 structor of his youth foresaw, that he put forth 
 one of those challenges to the Romanists, which 
 established his reputation, and extended it at 
 
FOREFATHERS. 109 
 
 once far beyond his own country. "If any 
 man," said he *' can prove either of the following 
 articles, by any one clear and plain sentence, 
 either out of the Scriptures or out of the works 
 of the old Fathers — or by a Canon of any old 
 General Assembly — or by any example of the 
 Primitive Church, then I promise and bind my- 
 self to go over to his party. 
 
 " I. That there was any private mass in the 
 world at that time, for the space of six hundred 
 years after Christ ; 
 
 " II. Or, that there was any Communion min- 
 istered unto the people under one kind ; 
 
 *' III. Or, that the people had their Common 
 Prayers then in a strange tongue, that they un- 
 derstood not ; 
 
 " IV. Or, that the Bishop of Rome was then 
 called an Universal Bishop, or the Head of the 
 Universal Church; 
 
 " V. Or, that the people were then taught to 
 believe that Christ's body is really, substantially, 
 carnally, or naturally, in the Sacrament ; 
 
 " VI. Or, that his Body is, or, may be, in a 
 thousand places, or more, at one time ; 
 
110 OUR PROTE STANT 
 
 " VII. Or, that the priest did then hold up the 
 Sacrament over his head ; 
 
 " VIII. Or, that the people did then fall down 
 and worship it with godly honour ; 
 
 " IX. Or, that images were then set up in the 
 churches, to the intent that the people might 
 worship them ; 
 
 "X. Or, that the lay people were then for- 
 bidden to read the VTord of God in their own 
 tongue." 
 
 A compilation of this brief character cannot 
 do justice to a work like " Jewel's Apology for 
 the Church of England." It must therefore 
 suffice to give an iaiperfect outline of its con- 
 tents. The first section treats of the persecu- 
 tions of the Primitive Christians. The second 
 recounts the false charges brought against the 
 early Reformers, tn the third there is an ex- 
 position of the doctrines of the Reformed Church. 
 The fourth section contains a refutation of the 
 accusations against the Reformers. The fifth 
 exposes the conduct of the enemies of the Re- 
 formation. The sixth is a most luminous de- 
 velopment of the causes of the Reformation. 
 The seventh proves that the Church of Rome is 
 
FOREFATHERS. J 1 J 
 
 not founded on antiquity. The eighth sets forth 
 the grounds of our separation from the Church 
 of Rome. The ninth and tenth discuss the su- 
 premacy of kings and sovereigns. The eleventh 
 compares the Pope and St. Peter ; and the last 
 section gives a summary view of the preceding 
 arguments. 
 
 When Jewel became a bishop, his life was 
 spent in almost incessant toil for the good of his 
 diocese and of the Church at large. He was 
 pronounced to be one of the " most notable and 
 painful prelates of his time." His doors were 
 constantly open to the destitute, and he Avas 
 lavish in his attentions to the deserving. *'T,he 
 judicious Hooker" was rescued from obscurity by 
 the discernment and bounty of bishop Jewel, and 
 repaid his benefactor's kindness in the days of 
 his own eminence, by pronouncing him to be 
 ^Hhe worthiest divine that Christendom had 
 bred for some hundreds of years." Jewel died 
 in 1571, worn out by visitations, preachings, and 
 episcopal superintendence, wasted to a skeleton, 
 and grown prematurely old at forty-nine, by a 
 consuming course of study and anxiety, which 
 began with his dawn of reason, and ended only 
 
112 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 with his life. Some of his last words were to 
 this effect: — "My prayer to the Almighty is, 
 that he will vouchsafe either to convert or con- 
 found the Roman Pontiff — the author, sower, 
 and standard bearer of all the rebellious dissen- 
 sions and schisms in the Christian world, who, 
 wherever he has planted his foot, has scattered 
 abroad the seeds of contention. A crown of 
 righteousness is now laid up for me ! Christ is 
 my righteousness. Father, thy will be done — 
 thy will, I say — not mine, for mine is imperfect 
 and depraved !" 
 
 Rowland Taylor, Rector of Hadleigh, in 
 Suffolk : when this stout-hearted martyr was 
 led through his parish on his Avay to Aldham 
 Common, where he suffered, the expressions of 
 public esteem and commiseration attested the 
 holiness of his life, and the faithfulness of his 
 ministry. At the foot of the bridge there was a 
 poor man with five small children ; when he 
 saw Dr. Taylor, he and his children fell down 
 on their knees, and he held up his hands, and 
 cried out with a loud voice — " O, dear father 
 and good shepherd, God help and succour thee, 
 as thou has many a time succoured me and my 
 
FOREFATHERS. 113 
 
 poor children!" The streets of Hadleigh were 
 beset on both sides of the way with men and 
 women, who waited to see him, and take their 
 last farewell. When they saw him going to his 
 painful death, many of them exclaimed, with 
 weeping eyes — "There goes om* good pastor, 
 who hath so affectionately instructed us, and 
 cared for us. O merciful God, what will his 
 scattered flock do without him !" Such witness 
 had this servant of Christ of his piety and de- 
 votedness, while he exercised his office of paro- 
 chial minister. 
 
 Bernard Gilpin, born 1517. Of the num- 
 berless ornaments of the Protestant faith, while 
 it was yet struggling for ascendancy in England, 
 there is not one of whom we have more reason 
 to be proud than of Bernard Gilpin. He com- 
 bined in his venerated person every Christian 
 character, which we are in the habit of loving 
 and respecting. He was the dihgent student, 
 the steady inquirer after truth, the ardent preach- 
 er of the Gospel, the faithful parish priest, the 
 unwearied missionary, (carrying the Word of 
 Life to the remotest parts of the county in which 
 he lived,) and the munificent patron of humble 
 10 
 
114 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 merit. Before he declared himself an advocate 
 of the sound principles of Protestantism, he not 
 only read diligently and weighed well the argu- 
 ments for and against Romanism, but he sought 
 out the company of the best reasoners on each 
 side of the question, and even travelled into 
 foreign countries that he might consult the 
 ablest divines on the Continent. It was not till 
 after much prayer, much deliberation, and the 
 deepest conviction, that he took upon himself 
 the office of a Protestant minister; and from 
 that time till the hour of his death, his whole 
 life was one continued offering of body, mind, 
 heart, soul, and strength, to God his Maker, and 
 to Christ his Redeemer. He might have held 
 the highest dignities of the Church, but he 
 refused them; and thus he testified against 
 worldly ambition. He expended all the produce 
 of his living, the Rectory of Houghton-le-Spring, 
 on works of charity and hospitality ; and thus 
 he acquired a name for disinterested goodness, 
 which his most bitter religious adversaries could 
 not refuse him. He was so scrupulously con- 
 scientious, that nothing could induce him to act 
 against his own views of right and wrong. Up- 
 
FOREFATHERS. 115 
 
 on an occasion in early life, when he thought he 
 could not properly perform the duties of a vicar- 
 age conferred on him, he resigned it. He was 
 told he might absent himself, and hold it by the 
 bishop's dispensation. " Dispensation !" said 
 he ; " will any dispensation restrain the tempter 
 from endeavouring in my absence to corrupt the 
 people committed to my care ? I fear it would 
 be but an ill excuse for the harm done to my 
 flock, if I should say, when God shall call me to 
 account for my stewardship, that I was absent 
 by dispensation." 
 
 Gilpin's own history of his conversion will 
 prove the best account that can be given of his 
 devout frame of mind and ardent love of truth. — 
 "You require me to write in a long discourse the 
 manner of my conversion from superstition to 
 the light of the Gospel, which I think you know 
 was not in a few years. As time and health 
 will permit, I shall hide nothing from you, con- 
 fessing my own shame, and yet hoping with the 
 Apostle — ' I have obtained mercy, because I did 
 it ignorantly.' Many things gave me occasion 
 to search both the Scriptures and ancient Fa- 
 thers ; whereby I began to see many great 
 
1 16 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 abuses, and some enormities used and maintain- 
 ed in Popery ; and to like well of sundry refor- 
 mations on the other side. 
 
 ** Afterwards, in three years' space, I saw so 
 much gross idolatry at Paris, Antwerp, and other 
 places, that made me to mislike more and more 
 the Popish doctrines, especially because the learn- 
 ed men disallowed image-worship in their schools, 
 and suffered it so grossly in their churches. 
 
 " I reasoned with certain that were learned of 
 my acquaintance, why there was no reformation 
 of these gross enormities, about images, reHcs, 
 pilgrimages, buying mass and trentals, with 
 many other things, which, in King Edward's 
 time, the Catholics (so called) did not only grant 
 to be far amiss, but, also promised that the 
 Church should be reformed, if ever the authority 
 came into their hands again. When I asked 
 when this reformation was to begin, in hope 
 whereof I was the more willing to return from 
 Paris, I was answered, — * We may not grant to 
 the ignorant people that any of these things 
 hath been amiss : if w^e do, they will straight 
 infer other things may be amiss as well as these, 
 and still go further and further.' This grieved 
 
FOREFATHERS. \\J 
 
 me, and made me geek for quietness in God's 
 Word : nowhere else I could find any stay. 
 
 "Thus in process of time I grew to be stronger 
 and stronger ; yet many grievous temptations 
 and doubts have I had, whicli many nights have 
 bereaved me of sleep. 
 
 " My nature hath evermore fled controversy 
 so much as I could. My delight and desire 
 hath been to preach Christ, and our salvation 
 by him, in simplicity and truth ; and to comfort 
 myself with the sweet promises of the Gospel, 
 and in prayer. 
 
 '* I have been ahvays scrupulous and troubled, 
 either in subscribing or swearing to any thing 
 besides the Scriptures and articles of our belief, 
 because the Scriptures ought ever to have a pre- 
 eminence above man's writings. 
 
 " And certainly, since I took this order to open 
 my faults in writing, not pausing who knew 
 them, so it might edify mj^self or others, I have 
 found great ease and quietness of conscience : 
 and am daily more edified, comforted and con- 
 firmed, in reading the Scriptures. And this I 
 praise God for, that when I was most troubled, 
 and weakest of all, my faith in God's mercy was 
 
1 1 8 OUR PROTESTANT 
 
 80 strong, that if I should then have departed 
 this life, I had, and have, a sure trust, that none 
 of these doubts would have hindered my salva- 
 tion. I hold fast one sentence of St. Paul, — 
 ' I have obtained mercy, in that I did it in igno- 
 rance ;' and another of Job, — ' If the Lord put 
 me to death, yet will I trust in him.' Yet have 
 I prayed God's mercy many times for all these 
 offences, infirmities, and ignorances ; and so I 
 will do so still, so long as I have to live in the 
 world." 
 
 These anecdotes will show that our Protestant 
 forefathers were supported in their own minds 
 and conduct, and that they promoted the cause 
 of the Reformation, by their faithful adherence 
 to the peculiar and distinguishing truths of the 
 Gospel. They confessed and preached Christ 
 in the divinity of his person, in the ejSicacy of 
 his atonement, in the fulness and freeness of his 
 grace, and in the supreme virtue of his interces- 
 sion. By the force of these doctrines, and by the 
 example of their holy lives, they cast down the 
 strong holds of superstition, and they re-erected 
 in their place that temple for the performance of 
 
FOREFATHERS. |19 
 
 " a reasonable service," which never can again 
 be destroyed, as long as the Bible continues 
 to be read in the vernacular language of Eng- 
 land. 
 
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