[157] See a paper by Cecil on the best means of reforming religion, written at this time with all his cautious wisdom, in Burnet, or in Strype's Annals of the Reformation, or in the Somers Tracts.
[158] Parl. Hist. vol. i. p. 394. In the reign of Edward, a prayer had been inserted in the liturgy to deliver us "from the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities." This was now struck out; and, what was more acceptable to the nation, the words used in distributing the elements were so contrived by blending the two forms successively adopted under Edward, as neither to offend the popish or Lutheran, nor the Zuinglian communicant. A rubric directed against the doctrine of the real or corporal presence was omitted. This was replaced after the restoration. Burnet owns that the greater part of the nation still adhered to this tenet though it was not the opinion of the rulers of the church. ii. 390, 406.
[159] Burnet; Strype's Annals, 169. Pensions were reserved for those who quitted their benefices on account of religion. Burnet, ii. 398. This was a very liberal measure, and at the same time a politic check on their conduct. Lingard thinks the number must have been much greater; but the visitors' reports seem the best authority. It is however highly probable that others resigned their preferments afterwards, when the casuistry of their church grew more scrupulous. It may be added, that the visitors restored the married clergy who had been dispossessed in the preceding reign; which would of course considerably augment the number of sufferers for popery.
[160] 1 Eliz. c. i. The oath of supremacy was expressed as follows: "I, A. B., do utterly testify and declare, that the queen's highness is the only supreme governor of this realm, and all other her highness's dominions and countries, as well in all spiritual and ecclesiastical things or causes, as temporal; and that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate, hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm; and therefore I do utterly renounce and forsake all foreign jurisdictions, powers, superiorities, and authorities, and do promise that from henceforth I shall bear faith and true allegiance to the queen's highness, her heirs and lawful successors, and to my power shall assist and defend all jurisdictions, pre-eminences, privileges, and authorities, granted or belonging to the queen's highness, her heirs and successors, or united and annexed to the imperial crown of this realm."
A remarkable passage in the injunctions to the ecclesiastical visitors of 1559, which may be reckoned in the nature of a contemporaneous exposition of the law, restrains the royal supremacy established by this act, and asserted in the above oath, in the following words: "Her majesty forbiddeth all manner her subjects to give ear or credit to such perverse and malicious persons, which most sinisterly and maliciously labour to notify to her loving subjects, how by words of the said oath it may be collected, that the kings or queens of this realm, possessors of the crown, may challenge authority and power of ministry of divine service in the church; wherein her said subjects be much abused by such evil-disposed persons. For certainly her majesty neither doth, nor ever will, challenge any other authority than that was challenged and lately used by the said noble kings of famous memory, King Henry VIII. and King Edward VI., which is, and was of ancient time, due to the imperial crown of this realm; that is, under God to have the sovereignty and rule over all manner of persons born within these her realms, dominions, and countries, of what estate, either ecclesiastical or temporal, soever they be, so as no other foreign power shall or ought to have any superiority over them. And if any person that hath conceived any other sense of the form of the said oath shall accept the same with this interpretation, sense, or meaning, her majesty is well pleased to accept every such in that behalf, as her good and obedient subjects, and shall acquit them of all manner of penalties contained in the said act, against such as shall peremptorily or obstinately take the same oath." 1 Somers Tracts, edit. Scott, 73.
This interpretation was afterwards given in one of the thirty-nine articles, which having been confirmed by parliament, it is undoubtedly to be reckoned the true sense of the oath. Mr. Butler, in his Memoirs of English Catholics, vol. i. p. 157, enters into a discussion of the question, whether Roman catholics might conscientiously take the oath of supremacy in this sense. It appears that in the seventeenth century some contended for the affirmative; and this seems to explain the fact, that several persons of that persuasion, besides peers from whom the oath was not exacted, did actually hold offices under the Stuarts, and even enter into parliament, and that the test act and declaration against transubstantiation were thus rendered necessary to make their exclusion certain. Mr. B. decides against taking the oath, but on grounds by no means sufficient; and oddly overlooks the decisive objection, that it denies in toto the jurisdiction and ecclesiastical authority of the pope. No writer, as far as my slender knowledge extends, of the Gallican or German school of discipline, has gone to this length; certainly not Mr. Butler himself, who in a modern publication (Book of the Roman Catholic Church, p. 120), seems to consider even the appellant jurisdiction in ecclesiastical causes as vested in the holy see by divine right.
As to the exposition before given of the oath of supremacy, I conceive that it was intended not only to relieve the scruples of catholics, but of those who had imbibed from the school of Calvin an apprehension of what is sometimes, though rather improperly, called Erastianism—the merging of all spiritual powers, even those of ordination and of preaching, in the paramount authority of the state, towards which the despotism of Henry, and obsequiousness of Cranmer, had seemed to bring the church of England.
[161] 1 Eliz. c. 2.
[162] Strype's Annals, i. 233, 241.
[163] Haynes, 395. The penalty for causing mass to be said, by the Act of Uniformity, was only 100 marks for the first offence. These imprisonments were probably in many cases illegal, and only sustained by the arbitrary power of the high commission court.