[636b] Milner, 181.
[636c] Ibid, 132.—No wonder he should behave as he did to Cariostadius, whose chief crime seems to be his having acted without his authority, though in conjunction with Bugenhagius, Melanancthon, Jonas, &c. He continued afterwards to persecute him with unrelenting virulence, and nothing would satisfy him short of absolute submission to his sovereign will and pontifical mandates. His banishment ensued. He appears to have been one of the best men among the reformers. It seems, however, that Luther was at last convinced of his misconduct in this affair, and obtained permission for his return from exile. See Mosheim, IV. 30.
[637] See Milner, 123.
[638] See Milner, 185, 186, where the authorities are referred to.
[642] Their blindness generally proceeded from a fallacious kind of reasoning, which is still very common among their orthodox descendants or successors, but which, like a two-edged sword, cuts both ways. They plead that they are the people of God, and are in the right way, so that their cause is the cause of God and truth, and therefore the papists are cruel persecutors when they deprive them of their lives or liberties. When they are reminded of having themselves before now deprived the papists and other christian sects of their liberties and lives, they answer, that that was done very justly, as those sufferers were either seditious persons or heretics, and what they did to them was in the way of suppressing sedition or restraining heresy. When they are told that the papists excuse and justify their own violent proceedings against the protestants much in the same way and with equal plausibility, they will answer, that what the papists assert is not true. When they are further told that the papists insist upon the truth of their allegations and the falshood of those of the protestants, they will reply that the papists belonging to a false church and influenced by a lying spirit, are not to be credited, but as for them, being the people of God and followers of the truth, their testimony ought to be received without hesitation.—Thus their reasoning ends just where it began—We are God’s people, and therefore our proceedings are not to be impeached! No better reasoning can be expected in defence of injustice and persecution.
[644] Robinson’s Pref. to 3d. vol. of Saurin, p. xii.
[645] The French protestants, or Gallic Calvinists were no less bigoted and intolerant than their brethren elsewhere. Their ministers, in 1563, requested that in order to prevent the propagation of heresy and monstrous opinions, the king would be pleased to receive into his royal protection their confession of faith tendered to him in 1561, and the profession of it; and to provide that atheists, libertines, anabaptists, and Servetists should be severely punished. See Priestley’s Ecclesiastical History, 6, 135.
[649] “He was called up to the cardinal (Wolsey) for heresie, where he was content to subscribe and graunte unto such articles as they propounded unto him.” Fox A. and M. p. 1736. This happened in 1529. In 1531 he was cited before the archbishop of Canterbury, Wareham, on fresh charges of heresy, and forced to sign an abjuration of them—see Fox, p. 4738. The third time he was called upon, with certain others, to give an account of his opinions, by Henry himself, on which occasion he escaped by an absolute submission of himself to his supreme head in spiritual matters. His fourth and last recantation was when he was deprived of his bishopric, and committed prisoner to the Tower, where he lay till the end of Henry’s reign, on suspicion of heresy, and for violating the fast and abstinence of Good Friday.—It has been suggested that imprisonment did not constitute the whole of his correction or chastisement on this occasion, as Shaxton bishop of Salisbury was forced to recant his Lutheran opinions, and carry a faggot at the burning of four other protestants, in 1546; and it is not likely that Henry would have been content with less from Shaxton’s fellow prisoner, Latimer, than a solemn abjuration of his doctrine.—See Milner, as before, page, 196.
[650] See Milner, p. 196.—Latimer’s name is to the sentence of Joan of Kent, who was burnt in 1549. See Burnet’s Hist. Ref. part ii. b. i. rec. 35. It also appears from Collier and Fox that he was one of the leading bishops who sat at the trial of Lambert the martyr.—See Milner, as before.