[Mrs. Dorothy Shaw's Tombstone, or the Saint's Remains, 1658, may be seen in the British Museum, Press-mark, 1418. i. 41.]
Replies.
CRANMER AND CALVIN.
(Vol. viii., p. 182.)
A correspondent who seems to delight in sibilants, signing, himself S. Z. Z. S., invites me to "preserve, in your columns, the letter of Calvin to Cranmer, of which Dean Jenkyns has only given extracts," as noticed by me in your Vol. vii., p. 621.
I would not shrink from the trouble of transcribing the whole letter, if a complete copy were only to be found in the short-lived columns of a newspaper, as inserted in the Record of May 15, 1843, by Merle d'Aubigné; but the Dean has given a reference to the volume in which both the letters he cites are preserved and accessible, viz. Calvin Epistles, pp. 134, 135., Genev. 1616.
S. Z. Z. S. justly observes that there are two points to be distinguished: first, Cranmer's wish that Calvin should assist in a general union of the churches protesting against Romish errors; second, Calvin's offer to assist in settling the Church of England. He adds, "The latter was declined; and the reason is demonstrated in Archbishop Laurence's Bampton Lectures." I neither possess those lectures, nor the volume of Calvin's epistles; but all I have seen of the correspondence between him and Cranmer, in the Parker Society's editions of Cranmer, and of original letters between 1537-58, and in Jenkyns' Remains of Cranmer, indisposes me to believe that Calvin made any "offer to assist in settling the Church of England." It appears from Dean Jenkyns' note, vol. i. p. 346., that Archbishop Laurence made a mistake in the order of the correspondence, calculated to mislead himself; and as to Heylyn's assertion, Eccles. Restaur., p. 65., that Calvin made such an offer and "that the Archbishop (Cranmer) knew the man and refused his offer," the Dean says:
"He gives no authority for the later part of his statement, and it can hardly be reconciled with Cranmer's letter to Calvin of March 20, 1552."