History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century Volume V Part 16

[Sidenote: MARTYRDOM.]

On the following morning--it was Whitsunday--the brutal Chilton and his a.s.sistants led Brown to the place of execution, and fastened him to the stake. Elizabeth and Alice, with his other children and his friends, desirous of receiving his last sigh, surrounded the pile, uttering cries of anguish. The f.a.gots were set on fire, while Brown, calm and collected, and full of confidence in the blood of the Saviour, clasped his hands, and repeated this hymn, which Foxe has preserved:--[265]

O Lord, I yield me to thy grace, Grant me mercy for my trespa.s.s; Let never the fiend my soul chase.

Lord, I will bow, and thou shalt beat, Let never my soul come in h.e.l.l-heat.

[265] Foxe, Acts and Mon. ii. p. 8 (folio 1684), iv. p. 132 (Lond.

1838). We shall in future refer to the latter edition, as being more accessible.

The martyr was silent: the flames had consumed their victim. Then redoubled cries of anguish rent the air. His wife and daughter seemed as if they would lose their senses. The bystanders showed them the tenderest compa.s.sion, and turned with a movement of indignation towards the executioners. The brutal Chilton perceiving this, cried out:--"Come along; let us toss the heretic's children into the flames, lest they should one day spring from their father's ashes."[266] He rushed towards Alice, and was about to lay hold of her, when the maiden shrank back screaming with horror. To the end of her life, she recollected the fearful moment, and to her we are indebted for the particulars. The fury of the monster was checked. Such were the scenes pa.s.sing in England shortly before the Reformation.

[266] Bade cast in his children also, for they would spring of his ashes. Ibid.

The priests were not yet satisfied, for the scholars still remained in England: if they could not be burnt, they should at least be banished.

They set to work accordingly. Standish, bishop of St. Asaph, a sincere man, as it would seem, but fanatical, was inveterate in his hatred of Erasmus, who had irritated him by an idle sarcasm. When speaking of _St. Asaph's_ it was very common to abbreviate it into _St. As's_; and as Standish was a theologian of no great learning, Erasmus, in his jesting way, would sometimes call him _Episcopus a Sancto Asino_. As the bishop could not destroy Colet, the disciple, he flattered himself that he should triumph over the master.

[Sidenote: 1516 and 1517.]

Erasmus knew Standish's intentions. Should he commence in England that struggle with the papacy which Luther was about to begin in Germany?

It was no longer possible to steer a middle course: he must either fight or leave. The Dutchman was faithful to his nature--we may even say, to his vocation: he left the country.

Erasmus was, in his time, the head of the great literary community. By means of his connexions and his correspondence, which extended over all Europe, he established between those countries where learning was reviving, an interchange of ideas and ma.n.u.scripts. The pioneer of antiquity, an eminent critic, a witty satirist, the advocate of correct taste, and a restorer of literature, one only glory was wanting: he had not the creative spirit, the heroic soul of a Luther.

He calculated with no little skill, could detect the smile on the lips or the knitting of the brows; but he had not that self-abandonment, that enthusiasm for the truth, that firm confidence in G.o.d, without which nothing great can be done in the world, and least of all in the church. "Erasmus _had_ much, but _was_ little," said one of his biographers.[267]

[267] Ad. Muller.

In the year 1517 a crisis had arrived: the period of the revival was over, that of the Reformation was beginning. The restoration of letters was succeeded by the regeneration of religion: the days of criticism and neutrality by those of courage and action. Erasmus was then only forty-nine years old; but he had finished his career. From being first, he must now be second: the monk of Wittemberg dethroned him. He looked around himself in vain: placed in a new country, he had lost his road. A hero was needed to inaugurate the great movement of modern times: Erasmus was a mere man of letters.

[Sidenote: ERASMUS GOES TO BASLE.]

When attacked by Standish in 1516, the literary king determined to quit the court of England, and take refuge in a printing-office. But before laying down his sceptre at the foot of a Saxon monk, he signalized the end of his reign by the most brilliant of his publications. The epoch of 1516-17, memorable for the theses of Luther, was destined to be equally remarkable by a work which was to imprint on the new times their essential character. What distinguishes the Reformation from all anterior revivals is the union of learning with piety, and a faith more profound, more enlightened, and based on the word of G.o.d. The Christian people was then emanc.i.p.ated from the tutelage of the schools and the popes, and its charter of enfranchis.e.m.e.nt was the Bible. The sixteenth century did more than its predecessors: it went straight to the fountain (the Holy Scriptures), cleared it of weeds and brambles, plumbed its depths, and caused its abundant streams to pour forth on all around. The Reformation age studied the Greek Testament, which the clerical age had almost forgotten,--and this is its greatest glory. Now the first explorer of this divine source was Erasmus. When attacked by the hierarchy, the leader of the schools withdrew from the splendid halls of Henry VIII.

It seemed to him that the new era which he had announced to the world was rudely interrupted: he could do nothing more by his conversation for the country of the Tudors. But he carried with him those precious leaves, the fruit of his labours--a book which would do more than he desired. He hastened to Basle, and took up his quarters in Frobenius's printing-office,[268] where he not only laboured himself, but made others labour. England will soon receive the seed of the new life, and the Reformation is about to begin.

[268] Frobenio, ut nullius officinae plus debeant sacrarum studia literarum. (Erasm. Ep. p. 330.) The study of sacred literature was more indebted to no printing-office than to that of Frobenius.

BOOK XVIII

THE REVIVAL OF THE CHURCH.

CHAPTER I.

Four reforming Powers--Which reformed England?--Papal Reform?--Episcopal Reform?--Royal Reform?--What is required in a legitimate Reform--The Share of the Kingly Power--Share of the Episcopal Authority--High and Low Church--Political Events--The Greek and Latin New Testament--Thoughts of Erasmus--Enthusiasm and anger--Desire of Erasmus--Clamours of the Priests--Their Attack at Court--Astonishment of Erasmus--His Labours for this Work--Edward Lee; his Character--Lee's _Tragedy_--Conspiracy.

It was within the province of four powers in the sixteenth century to effect a reformation of the church: these were the papacy, the episcopate, the monarchy, and Holy Scripture.

The Reformation in England was essentially the work of Scripture.

The only true reformation is that which emanates from the word of G.o.d.

The Holy Scriptures, by bearing witness to the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son of G.o.d, create in man by the Holy Ghost a faith which justifies him. That faith which produces in him a new life, unites him to Christ, without his requiring a chain of bishops or a Roman mediator, who would separate him from the Saviour instead of drawing him nearer. This Reformation _by the word_ restores that spiritual Christianity which the outward and hierarchical religion had destroyed; and from the regeneration of individuals naturally results the regeneration of the church.

[Sidenote: THE REFORMATION, NOT ROYAL.]

The Reformation of England, perhaps to a greater extent than that of the continent, was effected by the word of G.o.d. This statement may appear paradoxical, but it is not the less true. Those great individualities we meet with in Germany, Switzerland, and France--men like Luther, Zwingle, and Calvin--do not appear in England; but Holy Scripture is widely circulated. What brought light into the British isles subsequently to the year 1517, and on a more extended scale after the year 1526, was the word--the invisible power of the invisible G.o.d. The religion of the anglo-Saxon race--a race called more than any other to circulate the oracles of G.o.d throughout the world--is particularly distinguished by its biblical character.

The Reformation of England could not be papal. No reform can be hoped from that which ought to be not only reformed but abolished; and besides, no monarch dethrones himself. We may even affirm that the popedom has always felt a peculiar affection for its conquests in Britain, and that they would have been the last it would have renounced. A serious voice had declared in the middle of the fifteenth century: "A reform is neither in the will nor in the power of the popes."[269]

[269] James of Juterbock, prior of the Carthusians: De septem ecclesiae statibus opusculum.

The Reformation of England was not episcopal. Roman hierarchism will never be abolished by Roman bishops. An episcopal a.s.sembly may perhaps, as at Constance, depose three competing popes, but then it will be to save the papacy. And if the bishops could not abolish the papacy, still less could they reform themselves. The then existing episcopal power being at enmity with the word of G.o.d, and the slave of its own abuses, was incapable of renovating the church. On the contrary, it exerted all its influence to prevent such a renovation.

The Reformation in England was not royal. Samuel, David, and Josiah were able to do something for the raising up of the church, when G.o.d again turned his face towards it; but a king cannot rob his people of their religion, and still less can he give them one. It has often been repeated that "the English Reformation derives its origin from the monarch;" but the a.s.sertion is incorrect. The work of G.o.d, here as elsewhere, cannot be put in comparison with the work of the king; and if the latter was infinitely surpa.s.sed in importance, it was also preceded in time by many years. The monarch was still keeping up a vigorous resistance behind his intrenchments, when G.o.d had already decided the victory along the whole line of operations.

[Sidenote: TWO PARTIES IN THE CHURCH.]

Shall we be told that a reform effected by any other principle than the established authorities, both in _church_ and _state_, would have been a revolution? But has G.o.d, the lawful sovereign of the church, forbidden all revolution in a sinful world? A _revolution_ is not a revolt. The fall of the first man was a great revolution: the restoration of man by Jesus Christ was a counter-revolution. The corruption occasioned by popery was allied to the fall: the reformation accomplished in the sixteenth century was connected therefore with the restoration. There will no doubt be other interventions of the Deity, which will be revolutions in the same direction as the Reformation. When G.o.d creates a new heaven and a new earth, will not that be one of the most glorious of revolutions? The Reformation by the word alone gives truth, alone gives unity; but more than that, it alone bears the marks of true _legitimacy_; for the church belongs not unto men, even though they be priests. G.o.d alone is its lawful sovereign.

And yet the human elements which we have enumerated were not wholly foreign to the work that was accomplis.h.i.+ng in England. Besides the word of G.o.d, other principles were in operation, and although less radical and less primitive, they still retain the sympathy of eminent men of that nation.

And in the first place, the intervention of the king's authority was necessary to a certain point. Since the supremacy of Rome had been established in England by several usages which had the force of law, the intervention of the temporal power was necessary to break the bonds which it had previously sanctioned. But it was requisite for the monarchy, while adopting a negative and political action, to leave the positive, doctrinal, and creative action to the word of G.o.d.

Besides the Reformation _in the name of the Scriptures_, there was then in England another _in the name of the king_. The word of G.o.d began, the kingly power followed; and ever since, these two forces have sometimes gone together against the authority of the Roman pontiffs--sometimes in opposition to each other, like those troops which march side by side in the same army, against the same enemy, and which have occasionally been seen, even on the field of battle, to turn their swords against each other.

Finally, the episcopate, which had begun by opposing the Reformation, was compelled to accept it in despite of its convictions. The majority of the bishops were opposed to it; but the better portion were found to incline, some to the side of outward reform, of which separation from the papacy was the very essence, and others to the side of internal reform, whose mainspring was union with Jesus Christ. Lastly, the episcopate took up its ground on its own account, and soon two great parties alone existed in England: the scriptural party and the clerical party.

[Sidenote: POLITICAL EVENTS.]

These two parties have survived even to our days, and their colours are still distinguishable in the river of the church, like the muddy Arve and the limpid Rhone after their confluence. The royal supremacy, from which many Christians, preferring the paths of independence, have withdrawn since the end of the 16th century, is recognised by both parties in the establishment, with some few exceptions. But whilst the High Church is essentially hierarchical, the Low Church is essentially biblical. In the one, the Church is above and the word below; in the other, the Church is below and the Word above. These two principles, evangelism and hierarchism, are found in the Christianity of the first centuries, but with a signal difference. Hierarchism then almost entirely effaced evangelism; in the age of protestantism, on the contrary, evangelism continued to exist by the side of hierarchism, and it has remained _de jure_, if not always _de facto_, the only legitimate opinion of the church.

Thus there is in England a complication of influences and contests, which render the Work more difficult to describe; but it is on that very account more worthy the attention of the philosopher and the Christian.

Great events had just occurred in Europe. Francis I had crossed the Alps, gained a signal victory at Marignano, and conquered the north of Italy. The affrighted Maximilian knew of none who could save him but Henry VIII. "I will adopt you; you shall be my successor in the empire," he intimated to him in May 1516. "Your army shall invade France; and then we will march together to Rome, where the sovereign pontiff shall crown you king of the Romans." The king of France, anxious to effect a diversion, had formed a league with Denmark and Scotland, and had made preparations for invading England to place on the throne the "white rose,"--the pretender Pole, heir to the claims of the house of York.[270] Henry now showed his prudence; he declined Maximilian's offer, and turned his whole attention to the security of his kingdom. But while he refused to bear arms in France and Italy, a war of quite another kind broke out in England.

[270] A private combination, etc. Strype's Memorials, i. part ii. p.

16.

[Sidenote: ARRIVAL OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.]

The great work of the 16th century was about to begin. A volume fresh from the presses of Basle had just crossed the Channel. Being transmitted to London, Oxford, and Cambridge, this book, the fruit of Erasmus's vigils, soon found its way wherever there were friends of learning. It was the _New Testament_ of our Lord Jesus Christ, published for the first time in Greek with a new Latin translation--an event more important for the world than would have been the landing of the pretender in England, or the appearance of the chief of the Tudors in Italy. This book, in which G.o.d has deposited for man's salvation the seeds of life, was about to effect alone, without patrons and without interpreters, the most astonis.h.i.+ng revolution in Britain.