CRANMER AND CALVIN.

(Vol. viii., p. 182.)

A correspondent who seems to delight in sibilants, signing, himself S. Z. Z. S., invites me to "preserve, in your columns, the letter of Calvin to Cranmer, of which Dean Jenkyns has only given extracts," as noticed by me in your Vol. vii., p. 621.

I would not shrink from the trouble of transcribing the whole letter, if a complete copy were only to be found in the short-lived columns of a newspaper, as inserted in the Record of May 15, 1843, by Merle d'Aubigné; but the Dean has given a reference to the volume in which both the letters he cites are preserved and accessible, viz. Calvin Epistles, pp. 134, 135., Genev. 1616.

S. Z. Z. S. justly observes that there are two points to be distinguished: first, Cranmer's wish that Calvin should assist in a general union of the churches protesting against Romish errors; second, Calvin's offer to assist in settling the Church of England. He adds, "The latter was declined; and the reason is demonstrated in Archbishop Laurence's Bampton Lectures." I neither possess those lectures, nor the volume of Calvin's epistles; but all I have seen of the correspondence between him and Cranmer, in the Parker Society's editions of Cranmer, and of original letters between 1537-58, and in Jenkyns' Remains of Cranmer, indisposes me to believe that Calvin made any "offer to assist in settling the Church of England." It appears from Dean Jenkyns' note, vol. i. p. 346., that Archbishop Laurence made a mistake in the order of the correspondence, calculated to mislead himself; and as to Heylyn's assertion, Eccles. Restaur., p. 65., that Calvin made such an offer and "that the Archbishop (Cranmer) knew the man and refused his offer," the Dean says:

"He gives no authority for the later part of his statement, and it can hardly be reconciled with Cranmer's letter to Calvin of March 20, 1552."

The contemptuous expression, he "knew the man and refused his offer," is, in fact, utterly irreconcilable with Cranmer's language in all his three letters to Melancthon, to Bullinger, and to Calvin (Nos. 296, 297, 298. of Parker Society's edition of Cranmer's Remains, and Nos. 283, 284, 285. of Jenkyns' edition), where he tells each of the other two that he had written to Calvin from his desire—

"Ut in Anglia, aut alibi, doctissimorum et optimorum virorum synodus convocaretur, in qua de puritate ecclesiasticæ doctrinæ, et præcipue de consensu controversiæ sacramentariæ tractaretur."

Or, as he said to Calvin himself:

"Ut docti et pii viri, qui alios antecellunt eruditione et judicio, convenirent."

Your correspondent seems to have used the word "demonstrated" rather in a surgical than in its mathematical sense.

Having taken up my pen to supply you with an answer to this historical inquiry, I may as well notice some other articles in your No. 199. For example, in p. 167., L. need not have referred your readers to Halliwell's Researches in Archaic Language for an explanation of Bacon's word "bullaces." The word may be seen in Johnson's Dictionary, with the citation from Bacon, and instead of vaguely calling it "a small black and tartish plum," your botanical readers know it as the Prunus insititia.

Again, p. 173., J. M. may like to know farther, that the Duke of Wellington's clerical brother was entered on the boards of St. John's College, Cambridge, as Wesley, where the spelling must have been dictated either by himself, or by the person authorised to desire his admission. It continued to be spelt Wesley in the Cambridge annual calendars as late as 1808, but was altered in that of 1809 to Wellesley. The alteration was probably made by the desire of the family, and without communicating such desire to the registrary of the university. For it appears in the edition of Graduati Cantabrigienses, printed in 1823, as follows:

"Wesley, Gerard Valerian, Coll. Joh. A. M. 1792. Comitis de Mornington, Fil. nat. 4^tus."

In p. 173., C. M. Ingleby may like to know, as a clue to the origin of his apussee and, that I was taught at school, sixty years ago, to call & And per se, whilst some would call it And-per-se-and.

In the same page, the inquirer B. H. C. respecting the word mammon, may like to know that the history of that word has been given at some length in p. 1. to p. 68. of the Parker Society's edition of Tyndale's Parable of the wicked Mammon, where I have stated that it occurs in a form identical with the English in the Chaldee Targum of Onkelos on Exod. viii. 21., and in that of Jonathan on Judges, v. 9., as equivalent to riches; and that in the Syriac translation it occurs in a form identical with Μαμωνᾶ, in Exod. xxi. 30., as a rendering for

כֹפֶר

, the price of satisfaction. In B. H. C.'s citation from Barnes, even seems a misprint for ever. The Jews did not again fall into actual idolatry after the Babylonish captivity; but we are told that in the sight of God covetousness is idolatry.

Henry Walter.

Hasilbury Bryan.