VI
THE FLOWING TIDE OF PROTESTANTISM
Cranmer had no hand at all in the intrigue which overthrew the Protector. For a brief interval there was even some uncertainty whether the group who had captured the Government might not make terms with the Opposition, release Gardiner, and possibly take him into partnership. If Warwick ever had such an idea in his mind, he was far too acute to entertain it for long. Gardiner as a colleague would have been a very dangerous rival. The alternative was to assume the lead of the advanced wing of the progressive party. Warwick, who died professing himself a devout Catholic, had no difficulty in assimilating the jargon of the zealots, and convincing their honest enthusiasm that they might look upon him as a Joshua, while he doubled the part with that of Achan. To him, religion was not among the things that mattered; but religion might be made to serve its turn in forwarding his own ambitions.
Hitherto the Reformation in England had moved a good deal more closely along the lines laid down a hundred and fifty years before by Wiclif than on those of Luther or of Calvin; approximating more nearly to the Zurich school, though by no means identical with them. Zurich had proved more attractive to English refugees also. But now the abolition of the penal laws in England, and the dissatisfaction caused by the Augsburg Interim in Germany, brought into the country a number of foreigners, Lutheran and Calvinist as well as Zwinglian, including on the one hand Bucer and on the other John Knox—besides returning English refugees. Not a few of these foreign visitors were inspired with a lively missionary zeal, and the freedom of discussion permitted naturally caused debate and controversy to wax fast and furious. If the country in general found the concessions already made to the new learning somewhat larger than was quite to its taste, the followers of the new learning were very far from satisfied with them. And they were vocal exceedingly, if not precisely harmonious. It was very soon evident that the comprehensive ambiguity of the new Book of Common Prayer was in the eyes of the Reformers too liberal to the old Catholics and not sufficiently advanced for the new Protestants—controversy raging chiefly over two subjects, the first being the Eucharist, and the second Forms and Ceremonies.
Without attempting to examine the actual views on the former subject held at this time by Cranmer—as to which critics appear able to form very positive but very contradictory conclusions—it may be quite safely asserted that he had quite definitely given up all belief in Transubstantiation, but had not accepted the view most remote from it, that the service was purely commemorative. The varied range of intermediate views might be associated with either of these in a common Form of Service, but these extremes were evidently incompatible. One or other must be excluded. Cranmer, his right-hand man Ridley, and their associates, were all travelling towards the Zwinglian position, whether they ultimately reached it or not. If there was to be any more defining, it was the followers of the old learning who would be shut out thereby.
It was much the same with forms and ceremonies. The extreme men, whether they looked to Zurich or Geneva for guidance, regarded nearly everything in the way of vestments and ceremonial as the trappings of the Scarlet Woman. The Archbishop did not. Where these things did not directly imply the truth of specific doctrines definitely discarded—the sacrifice of the Mass, the worship of images, and the like—their preservation, in his view, tended to decency and reverence. Here, again, it was evident that any changes must tend to the exclusion of the rigid Catholics. They and the Calvinists could not travel in the same boat.
The result is to be seen in the second Prayer Book of Edward VI., in the new Ordinal, and in the Forty-two Articles which, with slight modification, became the Thirty-nine of Queen Elizabeth. Warwick—otherwise Northumberland—was with the extremists, who were vigorous and loud-voiced, and altogether exercised an amount of forcing-power quite disproportionate to the number of their adherents among the general public. If they had had their way, the re-modelling would have been on lines satisfactory to John Knox. Northumberland’s government would not have stood in the way. The Lutheranism of Germany and the Augsburg Confession was uncongenial. It was Cranmer, Ridley, and their adherents who succeeded in retaining for the Church of England a form to which she could mould herself, after the Marian régime, without returning to the Roman obedience or adopting the Scottish model. If that was a praiseworthy achievement, it is to Cranmer primarily that the praise is rightfully due.
That is what Cranmer did. From Somerset’s record, it may reasonably be inferred that it is very much what he would have endeavoured to do if he had remained in power. But he did not have the opportunity, because he was not in power, and Warwick cut his head off.
What Cranmer would have liked to do, beyond what he did, is another matter, and may be gathered from his proposed Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum—a document which shows that, Erastian though he was, he desired the clergy to have much ampler powers of jurisdiction than there was the faintest chance of the State delegating to them. It was an essay in constitution-making of a decidedly academic order: the machinery would never have worked. It does not reveal unsuspected qualities of constructive statesmanship; but it does not detract from the credit due to the manner in which the Archbishop managed to steer the ship through very stormy waters with a mutinous crew on board. The performance was not, perhaps, masterly; but it is not extravagant praise to call it meritorious.