[320] The translation of the Psalms begun by Clement Marot, was continued by Theodore Boza, who obtained, during this same year, the authority of the Council of Geneva for the publication of a part of his work.
[321] Edward VI., son of Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour, King of England, born in 1537, died, in his sixteenth year, the 8th of July 1553. Gifted with a precocious strength of reason, and a lively sensibility, instructed in the ancient languages and foreign literature, this young prince did not live long enough to realize the hopes to which his accession to the throne had given birth. "His virtues," says the historian Hume, "had made him an object of tender affection to the public. He possessed mildness of disposition, application to study and business, a capacity to learn and judge, and an attachment to equity and justice." Devotional reading had a particular attraction for this prince, who was heartily devoted to the cause of the Reformation. Calvin dedicated two of his commentaries to him: "Joannis Calvini Commentarii in Iesaiam Prophetam, Eduardo VI., Angliæ Regi, 8 Cal. Januarii 1551." "Joannis Calvini Commentarii in Epistolas Canonicas." The dedication of the first of these commentaries (25th December 1550) furnishes us the date of the letter of Calvin, written in the month of January 1551, and brought to the King by the minister, Nicolas des Gallars.
[322] The privilege granted by King Edward VI. to the Church of the foreign Protestants instituted at London 1550. The royal patent was thus expressed:—"Considering that it is the duty of a Christian prince well to administer the affairs of his kingdom, to provide for religion, and for the unhappy exiles, afflicted and banished by reason thereof, we would have you to know, that having compassion of the condition of those who have for some considerable time past been domiciled in our kingdom, and come there daily, of our special grace ... will and ordain that henceforward they may have in our city of London a church, to be called the Church of the Lord Jesus, where the assembly of the Germans and other strangers can meet and worship, for the purpose of having the Gospel purely interpreted by the ministers of their church, and the Sacraments administered according to the word of God and the apostolic ordinance."
[323] The agreement concluded two years before, between the Churches of Geneva and of Zurich, on the question of the Sacraments, had been a source of joy to all the sober-minded in Switzerland and in Germany, who had deplored the excesses of the sacramental quarrel. But it displeased the intemperate Lutheran party, who accused Calvin of fickleness, and went so far as to charge him with having changed his opinions, and with squaring his doctrine to that of Zuingle, since the defeat of the Protestant party in Germany. This was nothing but a calumny, which is removed by a comparison of the previous writings of Calvin upon the Supper, with the formula drawn up under his care and which he was desirous should be published at Zurich.—Ruchat, tom. v. p. 379.
[324] Some have erroneously fixed on 1549 as the date of this publication. Delayed by the theologians of Zurich it was only finished in 1551, under the title—Consensio mutua in re Sacramentaria ministrorum Tigurinæ Ecclesiæ et D. Joannis Calvini Ministri Genevensis Ecclesiæ. Zurich, 8vo. Caused by Calvin to be translated into French the following year, this important document figures in the Recueil des Opuscules, p. 1137, with a preface by Calvin to the Ministers and Doctors of the Church of Zurich.
[325] Under this title, Bullinger had commenced publishing a series of discourses concerning the principal points of the Christian religion.
[326] See the letter to the king, p. 299.
[327] Having returned to England the previous year, and having been appointed Bishop of Gloucester through the patronage of Cranmer, Hooper was imprisoned and suffered a few days of captivity for having refused to wear, at the time of his consecration, the sacerdotal dress then in use in the English Church. See his correspondence with Bullinger, Zurich Letters, 1537-1558, tom. i. p. 9; Burnet, vol. i.
[328] After having proscribed the Reformed worship in the town of Augsburg, the Emperor took up his quarters at Inspruck, among the valleys of the Tyrol, from which he could keep an eye at once upon the Council of Trent, Germany, and Italy.—Robertson, book x.
[329] Bullinger had presented the King of England with his third and fourth Decade, (see note 1, p. 306,) with a long letter, in which he reminds the young king of the duties which he had to fulfil towards his subjects. "This epistle and book were presented to the King by the hands of Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, personally acquainted with Bullinger, to whom the King declared his good acceptance thereof, and the respect and esteem he had for the reverend author."—Strype, Memoir, vol. ii. pp. 390, 394.