From Strasburg also the university of Oxford was destined to receive a professor of divinity in the person of the celebrated Peter Martyr. This good and learned man, a Florentine by birth and during some years principal of a college of Augustines at Naples, having gradually become a convert to the doctrines of the reformers, and afterwards proceeding openly to preach them, was compelled to quit his country in order to avoid persecution. Passing into Switzerland, he was received with affectionate hospitality by the disciples of Zwingle at Zurich; and after making some abode there he repaired to Basil, whence Bucer caused him to be invited to fill the station of theological professor at Strasburg. He was also appointed the colleague of this divine in the ministry, and their connexion had subsisted about five years in perfect harmony when the offers of Cranmer induced the two friends to remove into England.
It is to be presumed that no considerable differences of opinion on points deemed by themselves essential could exist between associates so united; but a greater simplicity of character and of views, and superior boldness in the enunciation of new doctrines, strikingly distinguished the proceedings of Peter Martyr from those of his friend. With respect to church government, he, like Bucer, was willing to conform to the regulations of Cranmer and the English council; but he preached at Oxford on the eucharist with so Zwinglian a cast of sentiment, that the popish party raised a popular commotion against him, by which his life was endangered, and he was compelled for a time to withdraw from the city. Tranquillity was soon however restored by the interference of the public authority, and the council proceeded vigorously in obliterating the last vestiges of Romish superstition. Ridley throughout his own diocese now caused the altars to be removed from the churches, and communion-tables to be placed in their room; and, as if by way of comment on this alteration, Martyr and others procured a public recognition of the Genevan as a sister church, and the admission into the English service-book of the articles of faith drawn up by Calvin.
During the remainder of Edward's reign the tide of public opinion continued running with still augmenting velocity towards Geneva. Calvin took upon him openly to expostulate with Bucer on the preference of state expediency to Scripture truth, betrayed, as he asserted, by the obstinate adherence of this divine to certain doctrines and observances which savoured too much of popery; and it is probable that a still nearer approach might have been made to his simpler ritual, but for the untimely death of the zealous young king, and the total ruin of the new establishment which ensued.
Just before the persecutions of Mary drove into exile so many of the most zealous and conscientious of her protestant subjects, the discord between the Lutherans and those whom they styled Sacramentarians had burst out afresh in Germany with more fury than ever. The incendiary on this occasion was Westphal, superintendant of the Lutheran church of Hamburgh, who published a violent book on the subject of the eucharist; and through the influence of this man, and of the outrageous spirit of intolerance which his work had raised, Latimer and Ridley were stigmatized by fellow protestants as "the devil's martyrs," and the Lutheran cities drove from their gates as dangerous and detestable heretics the English refugees who fled to them for shelter. By those cities or congregations, on the contrary,—whether in Germany, France, or Switzerland,—in which the tenets either of Zwingle or Calvin were professed, these pious exiles were received with open arms, venerated as confessors, cherished as brethren in distress, and admitted with perfect confidence into the communion of the respective churches.
Treatment so opposite from the two contending parties, between which they had supposed themselves to occupy neutral ground, failed not to produce corresponding effects on the minds of the exiles. At Frankfort, where the largest body of them was assembled, and where they had formed an English congregation using king Edward's liturgy, this form of worship became the occasion of a division amongst themselves, and a strong party soon declared itself in favor of discarding all of popish forms or doctrine which the English establishment, in common with the Lutheran, had retained, and of adopting in their place the simpler creed and ritual of the Genevan church.
It was found impracticable to compromise this difference; a considerable number finally seceded from the congregation, and it was from this division at Frankfort that English nonconformity took its birth. No equally strong manifestation of opinion occurred amongst the exiles in other cities; but on the whole it may be affirmed, that the majority of these persons returned from their wanderings with their previous predilection for the Calvinistic model confirmed and augmented by the united influence of the reasonings and persuasions of its ablest apostles, and of those sentiments of love and hatred from which the speculative opinions of most men receive an irresistible though secret bias.
Their more unfortunate brethren, in the mean time, who, unwilling to resign their country, or unable to escape from it, had been compelled to look persecution in the face and deliberately acquaint themselves with all its horrors, were undergoing other and in some respects opposite influences.
An overpowering dread and abhorrence of the doctrines of the church of Rome must so have absorbed all other thoughts and feelings in the minds of this dispersed and affrighted remnant of the English church, as to leave them little attention to bestow upon the comparatively trifling objects of dispute between protestant and protestant. They might even be disposed to regard such squabbles with emotions of indignation and disgust, and to ask how brethren in affliction could have the heart to nourish animosities against each other. The memory of Edward VI. was deservedly dear to them, and they would contemplate the restoration of his ritual by the successor of Mary as an event in which they ought to regard all their prayers as fulfilled:—yet the practice, forced upon them by the vigilance of persecution, of holding their assemblies for divine worship in places unconsecrated, with the omission of every customary ceremonial and under the guidance frequently of men whom zeal and piety alone had ordained to the office of teachers and ministers of religion, must amongst them also have been producing a secret alienation from established forms and rituals, and a propensity to those extemporaneous effusions of devotion, or urgencies of supplication, which seem best adapted to satisfy the wants of the pious soul under the fiery trial of persecution and distress. The Calvinistic model therefore, as the freest of all, and that which most industriously avoided any resemblance of popish forms, might be the one most likely to obtain their suffrage also.
Such being the state of religious opinion in England at the accession of Elizabeth, it will not appear wonderful that the Genevan reformer should have begun to indulge the flattering expectation of seeing his own scheme established in England as in Scotland, and himself revered throughout the island as a spiritual director from whose decisions there could be no appeal. Emboldened at once by zeal and ambition, he hastened to open a communication with the new government, in the shape of an exhortation to the queen to call a protestant council for establishing uniformity of doctrine and of church government; but his dream of supremacy was quickly dissipated on receiving for answer, that England was determined to preserve her episcopacy.
This decisive rejection of the presbyterian form was followed up by other acts on the part of the queen which gave offence to all the real friends of reformed religion, and went far to prove that Elizabeth was at heart little more of a protestant than her father. The general prohibition of preaching, which was strictly enforced during the first months of her reign, was understood as a measure of repression levelled full as much against the indiscreet zeal of the returned exiles, as against the disaffection of the catholics. An order that until the next meeting of parliament no change should be made in the order of worship established by the late queen, except the reading of the creed and commandments in English, implied, at least, a determination in the civil power to take the management of religion entirely out of the hands of a clergy whose influence over the minds of the people it viewed with a jealous eye. It was soon also discovered, to the increasing horror of all true protestants, that the queen was strongly disposed to insist on the celibacy of the clergy; and even when the strenuous efforts of Cecil and others had brought her to yield with reluctance this capital point, she still pertinaciously refused to authorize their marrying by an express law. She would not even declare valid the marriages contracted by them during the reign of her brother; so that it became necessary to procure private bills of legitimation in behalf of the offspring of these unions, though formed under the express sanction of then existing laws. The son of Cranmer himself, and the son of archbishop Parker, were of the number of those who found it necessary to resort to this disagreeable and degrading expedient.