[125] Burnet, ii. 105, App. 216; Strype, ii. 121, 208; Collier, etc. The Calvinists certainly did not own a local presence in the elements. It is the artifice of modern Romish writers, Dr. Milner, Mr. C. Butler, etc., to disguise the incompatibility of their tenets with those of the church of England on this, as they do on all other topics of controversy, by representing her as maintaining an actual, incomprehensible presence of Christ's body in the consecrated elements; which was never meant to be asserted in any authorised exposition of faith; though in the seventeenth century it was held by many distinguished churchmen. See the 27th, 28th, and 29th articles of religion. An eminent living writer, who would be as useful as he is agreeable, if he could bring himself to write with less heat and haste, says, that at Elizabeth's accession, among other changes, "the language of the article which affirmed a real presence was so framed as to allow latitude of belief for those who were persuaded of an exclusive one." Southey's Book of the Church, vol. ii. p. 247. The real presence was not affirmed, but denied, in the original draft; and as to what Mr. S. calls "an exclusive one" (that is, transubstantiation, if the words have any meaning), it is positively rejected in the amended article.
[126] It appears to have been common for the clergy, by licence from their bishops, to retain concubines, who were, Collier says, for the most part their wives. P. 262. But I do not clearly understand in what the distinction could have consisted; for it seems unlikely that marriages of priests were ever solemnised at so late a period; or if they were, they were invalid.
[127] Stat. 2 and 3 Edw. VI. c. 21; 5 and 6 Edw. VI. c. 12; Burnet, 89.
[128] 2 Strype, 53. Latimer pressed the necessity of expelling these temporising conformists.—"Out with them all! I require it in God's behalf: make them quondams, all the pack of them." Id. 204; 2 Burnet, 143.
[129] Burnet, iii. 190, 196. "The use of the old religion," says Paget, in remonstrating with Somerset on his rough treatment of some of the gentry, and partiality to the commons, "is forbidden by a law, and the use of the new is not yet printed in the stomachs of eleven out of twelve parts of the realm, whatever countenance men make outwardly to please them in whom they see the power resteth." Strype, ii. Appendix, H .H. This seems rather to refer to the upper classes, than to the whole people. But at any rate it was an exaggeration of the fact, the protestants being certainly in a much greater proportion. Paget was the adviser of the scheme of sending for German troops in 1549, which, however, was in order to quell a seditious spirit in the nation, not by any means wholly founded upon religious grounds. Strype, xi. 169.
[130] 2 Edward 6, c. 1; Strype, xi. 81.
[131] 37 H. 8, c. 2; 1 Edw. 6, c. 14; Strype, ii. 63; Burnet, etc. Cranmer, as well as the catholic bishops, protested against this act, well knowing how little regard would be paid to its intention. In the latter part of the young king's reign, as he became more capable of exerting his own power, he endowed, as is well known, several excellent foundations.
[132] Strype, Burnet, Collier, passim; Harmer's Specimens, 100. Sir Philip Hobby, our minister in Germany, writes to the Protector in 1548, that the foreign protestants thought our bishops too rich, and advises him to reduce them to a competent living; he particularly recommends his taking away all the prebends in England. Strype, 88. These counsels, and the acts which they prompted, disgust us, from the spirit of rapacity they breathe. Yet it might be urged with some force that the enormous wealth of the superior ecclesiastics had been the main cause of those corruptions which it was sought to cast away, and that most of the dignitaries were very averse to the new religion. Even Cranmer had written some years before to Cromwell, deprecating the establishment of any prebends out of the conventual estates, and speaking of the collegiate clergy as an idle, ignorant, and gormandising race, who might, without any harm, be extinguished along with the regulars. Burnet, iii. 141. But the gross selfishness of the great men in Edward's reign justly made him anxious to save what he could for a church that seemed on the brink of absolute ruin. Collier mentions a characteristic circumstance. So great a quantity of church plate had been stolen, that a commission was appointed to enquire into the facts, and compel its restitution. Instead of this, the commissioners found more left than they thought sufficient, and seized the greater part to the king's use.
[133] They declared, in the famous protestation of Spire, which gave them the name of Protestants, that their preachers having confuted the mass by passages of Scripture, they could not permit their subjects to go thither; since it would afford a bad example, to suffer two sorts of service, directly opposite to each other, in their churches. Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, vi. 394, vii. 24.
[134] Stat. 2 and 3 Edw. 6, c. 1; Strype's Cranmer, p. 233.