[103] Jewell's Works, iv. p. 1144.
CHAPTER V.
LIGHT FROM BOTH SIDES.
(1534-1535.)
In England it was reserved for Catholics as well as for evangelicals to give the world, amid great misery, remarkable examples of Christian virtues. Latimer and others preached the truth courageously; martyrs like Bilney, Tewkesbury, and Fryth had laid down their lives for the Gospel. Now in the other party, laymen, monks, and priests, with unquestionably a less enlightened piety, were about to furnish proofs of their sincerity. There were Roman martyrs also. Two armies were in presence; many fell on both sides; but there was a sensible difference between this spiritual war and the wars of nations. Those who bit the dust did not fall under the weapons of a hostile army; there was a third power, the king-pope, who took his station between the two lines, and dealt his blows now to the right, now to the left. Leaders of the pontifical army were to be smitten in the struggle in which so many evangelicals had already fallen.
=MORE'S WRETCHED CONDITION.=
Sir Thomas More, while in prison, strove to banish afflicting thoughts by writing a history of Christ's passion. One day when he came to these words of the Gospel: Then came they and laid hands on Jesus, and took Him, the door opened, and Kingston, the governor of the Tower, accompanied by Rich, the attorney-general, appeared. 'Sir Thomas,' said Rich, 'if an act of parliament ordered all Englishmen to acknowledge me as their king, would you acknowledge me?'—'Yes, sir.'[104]— 'And if an act of parliament ordered all Englishmen to recognize me as pope?'—'Parliament has no authority to do it,' answered More. Sir Thomas held that an act of parliament was sufficient to dethrone a king of England: it is to a great grandson of More's that we are indebted for this opinion, which a grand-nephew of Cromwell put in practice a hundred years later. Was Henry VIII. exasperated because More disposed so freely of his crown? It is possible, but be that as it may, the harshness of his imprisonment was increased. Suffering preceded martyrdom. The illustrious scholar was forced to pick up little scraps of paper on which to write a few scattered thoughts with a coal.[105] This was not the worst. 'I have neither shirt nor sute,'[106] he wrote to the chief secretary of state, 'nor yet other clothes that are necessary for me to wear, but that be ragged and rent too shamefully. Notwithstanding, I might easily suffer that if that would keep my body warm. And now in my age my stomach may not away but with a few kind of meats; which, if I want, I decay forthwith, and fall into crases and diseases of my body, and cannot keep myself in health.... I beseech you be a good master unto me in my necessity, and let me have such things as are necessary for me in mine age. Restore me to my liberty out of this cold and painful imprisonment. Let me have some priest to hear my confession against this holy time, and some books to say my devotions more effectually. The Lord send you a merry Christmas.
'At the Tower, 23rd December.'
It is a relief to hope that this scandalous neglect proceeded from heedlessness and not from cruelty. His requests were granted.
While these sad scenes were enacted in the Tower, there was great confusion in all England, where the most opposite parties were in commotion. When the traditional yoke was broken, every man raised up his own banner. The friends of More and Fisher wished to restore the papacy of the Roman bishop; Henry VIII., Cromwell, and the court thought how to establish the supremacy of the king; finally, Cranmer and a few men of the same stamp, endeavored to steer between these quicksands, and aspired to introduce the reign of Holy Scripture under the banner of royalty. This contest between forces so different, complicated too by the passions of the sovereign, was a terrible drama destined to wind up not in a single catastrophe, but in many. Illustrious victims, taken indiscriminately from all parties, were to fall beneath the oft-repeated blows and be buried in one common grave.
The prudent Cranmer lived in painful anxiety. Surrounded by enemies who watched every step, he feared to destroy the cause of truth, by undertaking reforms as extensive as those on the continent. The natural timidity of his character, the compromises he thought it his duty to make with regard to the hierarchy, his fear of Henry VIII., his moderation, gentleness, and plasticity of character and in some respects of principle, prevented his applying to the work with the decision of a Luther, a Calvin, or a Knox. Tyndale, if he had possessed the influence that was his due, would have accomplished a reform similar to that of those great leaders. To have had him for a reformer would, in Wickliffe's native land, have been the source of great prosperity; but such a thing was impossible: his country gave him—not a professor's chair but exile. Cranmer moved forward slowly: he modified an evangelical movement by a clerical concession. When he had taken a step forward, he stopped suddenly, and apparently drew back; not from cowardice, but because his extreme prudence so urged him. The boldness of a Farel or a Knox is in our opinion far more noble; and yet this extreme moderation saved Cranmer and protestantism with him. Near a throne like that of Henry's, it was only a man of extreme precaution who could have retained his position in the see of Canterbury. If Cranmer should come into collision with the Tudor's sceptre, he will find that it is a sword. God gives to every people and to every epoch the man necessary to it. Cranmer was this man for England, at the time of her separation from the papacy. Notwithstanding his compromises, he never abandoned the great principles of the Reformation; notwithstanding his concessions, he took advantage of every opportunity to encourage those who shared his faith to march towards a better future. The primate of England held a torch in his hand which had not the brilliancy of that borne by Luther and Calvin, but the tempest that blew upon it for fifteen or twenty years could not extinguish it. Sometimes he was seized with terror: as he heard the lion roar, he bent his head, kept in the background, and concealed the truth in his bosom; but again he rose and again held out to the Church the light he had saved from the fury of the tyrant. He was a reed and not an oak—a reed that bent too easily, but through this very weakness he was able to do what an oak with all its strength would never have accomplished. The truth triumphed.