Thomas Cranmer
4
THOMAS CRANMER
G. S. R. Cox
One frequent charge made against Cranmer, and therefore against the English Reformation, is that of expediency. This was not a biblical but a political reformation, and therefore one which stopped far short of the glories of Geneva. This, then, is the question to which we must address ourselves. Was Cranmer’s work and behavior (and therefore the English Reformation) a matter of expediency, or can it be explained in terms of Cranmer’s principles? Then, if it can be so explained, how far were those principles biblical, and how far do they fall short of what we today consider to be the full biblical principles?
Before considering this, however, we must refer to some other questions which, while outside the scope of this paper, deserve careful thought as having at least an indirect bearing on our conclusions:
1. The role of Parliament in this period. How much was Henry’s reformation the desire of the representatives of the nation? How far was Parliament representative of “the nation”? Is it true to say that the King himself was very much a representative—somewhat larger than life perhaps—of what Englishmen felt?
2. The extent and nature of the desire for reformation. What parts were merely anti-clericalism, and what Lollard and Lutheran?
3. The political and geographical differences between England and other areas of the Reformation. England was, first, a united and relatively pacified state, as a result of Henry VII’s policy after the Wars of the Roses, whereas hardly any other area of Reform was so peaceably settled. Again, England had no ready-made warring factions—though it was the fear of these which contributed to Henry VIII’s frequent matrimonial essays—such as were ready to hand in France and Scotland and in that magnificent contradiction in terms, the Holy Roman Empire. Again, Henry was perhaps the most powerful, autocratic, even despotic, individual monarch in Europe in a day when shortness of lines of communication made for efficiency and power. Again, there was no outstanding English Reformer to balance the King. One might almost think that there was only room for one leader in each area, let him be ruler or reformer, but that there could not be two. Here we had no Luther or Calvin, Zwingli or Knox, but instead there was always the very theologically minded Henry VIII. In England a reformation could almost only be effected by the State, and through the instrumentality of an archbishop who was not merely Primate of the Church, but also constitutionally the first adviser to the Crown, a position which both conferred powers and imposed restraints. For Luther and other Reformers, truth could be the only consideration. Cranmer had also to consider how truth could be translated into action and imposed on a doubting people.
4. The nature of hypocrisy in the case of those who held office in the sixteenth-century State. Cranmer was not alone in believing that, compared to the service of God and the State—usually linked in so few words and in the same breath—the claims of individual conscience were of no account. Thus a minister of state remained in office until relieved of it by the King himself. Like today’s civil servant he had to carry out official policy with no more choice than a man has today in the payment of his rates. Hence we find the same men in office under Henry VIII and Edward VI, under Mary and Elizabeth. Even so upright a man as Sir Thomas More remained Lord Chancellor while Henry was seeking his annulment from Catherine of Aragon—a measure which More abhorred. (It should be said in Henry’s favor that he never forced his ministers to carry out work they disliked. More was not commanded to deal with the annulment; Gardiner did that. Other cases could be cited.) This principle was likewise applied to the Church when the King became its Supreme Head. Bishops, whether Catholic or Protestant, gave effect to legislation whatever its character. Heath, afterwards Mary’s Chancellor, Tunstall, Day, Thirlby, and other Catholics administered the First Act of Uniformity, and their action involved at least as great a sacrifice of conscience as Cranmer was required to make under Henry VIII, and he held far higher views than they did of the duty of subjects to their king.
Background of the English Reformation
We begin the matter proper with a survey of the background and course of the English Reformation.
“If Henry VIII had not renounced the papal claims there is no doubt that the papal power might have lasted a generation or even two generations longer; but there can be no conceivable doubt that the Reformation and the overthrow of the papal power would have come in England as in Germany. Thunderbolts do not come from a clear sky.” Thus wrote one eminent historian. Let us therefore examine the clouds from which this “thunderbolt” came, with a brief glance at the background at the beginning of Henry’s reign, and the main factors underlying Henry’s reformation.
As backcloth to a more detailed consideration of the causes of the Reformation in England, we can say that the country’s religion was punctilious, pietistic—and superficial. Socially and economically we have the rise of an increasingly powerful middle-class, which found its progress hampered by the Church, and which could be divided into three groups: the old adherents of the medieval point of view; those adherents of the New Learning who had no desire to break with Rome, but desired reform from within; and the “Protestant party.” One fact, which is true of the whole country and which needs to be emphasized, is that the people were sick of war and anarchy. They had had their fill of “freedom,” and their main desire now was for strong and definite government. That Henry VIII was the man for such a task is undeniable, as is also the fact that he seems to have voiced time and again claims which were merely the articulation of the wishes of his people. While a superficial division of “the clouds” would be possible into political, social, and religious, we shall see that the latter is the thread that runs right through the matter, as indeed the Church did pervade life in the Middle Ages.
1. Political—basically anti-papal. This was partly historical, having its roots into the continuing partial freedom of the English Church, dating from William I; partly national, since Renaissance nationalism was reacting against the supra-nationalistic claims of the Papacy; and partly moral, with a revulsion against the worldliness and abuses of the Papal Curia.
2. Social and Economic—basically anti-clerical, again partly historical against such long-standing abuses as “Benefit of Clergy” and the arrogant clerical treatment of the laity (e.g. Hunne’s case 1514); partly economic since the Church as a permanent and undying, but also conservative and reactionary landlord blocked the path to improvements and possession coveted by the rising middle class; and partly moral, with a widespread contempt of clerical standards of living.
3. The more strictly Religious subdivides into a consideration of the Lollards, rooted in the past, inchoate perhaps as to organization or strict doctrinal definitions, but without doubt a flourishing movement, and the Lutherans, at first largely intellectual in Cambridge in the 1520s, and spreading in the Southeast of England as a result of trade with Northern Europe.
Combined with all these was, of course, the character of the king, deserving a separate study, since he is far more complex and interesting than the Papist ogre or sensual Bluebeard accepted by so many. To him then we must turn as we follow the course of the English Reformation.
Course of the English Reformation
The immediate occasion of the English Reformation which grew out of the breach with Rome was of course “the King’s matter”—put bluntly, that Henry had no legitimate male heir, and for good or ill he did not intend to leave England to a renewed outburst of the Wars of the Roses. He had been married for some years to the widow of his brother, despite the Levitical prohibition, and she had borne him, apart from the Princess Mary, a succession of still-born or swiftly dying children. In a superstitious age in which some had queried even the Papal right to dispense from such a close relationship, it was natural for Henry to feel concerned and to question his conscience, the more so when his conscience sat so close to his heart, and Anne Boleyn had captured his heart. Could not the Pope dispense his predecessor’s dispensation? This sort of thing was being done all the time, for of course there was no such thing as divorce, and indeed had been done twice in Henry’s family circle within the last thirty years. Unfortunately the Pope, usually so helpful—for a consideration—could not on this occasion oblige, for his Italian power politics had put him at the mercy of the Emperor Charles V, and Charles was the nephew of Catherine. (The Pope did suggest in all seriousness that Henry should merely take an additional second wife, as had done a previous King of Spain.)
By 1529 Cardinal Wolsey had failed to settle the King’s matter and was dismissed and arrested. He mercifully died on the way to his trial. Recourse was had to the advice of the Universities, and Henry also took measures to seize control of the English Church. The first Reformation Parliament (1529–1536) began to attack ecclesiastical abuses. Convocation under Archbishop Warham paid a crushing fine for breach of the old Praemunire Statute, and declared Henry “Supreme Head of the Church, so far as the law of Christ allows.” (The qualification soon vanished.) In 1531, and following fruitless appeals to Rome concerning the annulment, the autumn of 1532 brought matters to a head. Anne Boleyn was made Marquess of Pembroke, and by the end of the year was with child. Henry’s heir must be legitimate; therefore he must be free to marry. Warham’s death, no doubt also influencing Anne’s timing, made way for Cranmer whose unwilling appointment was ratified exceptionally swiftly by the Pope. The new archbishop pronounced Henry’s annulment with Catherine and his marriage with Anne valid. (All three were excommunicated for their pains.) The various Acts cutting off Appeals and money to Rome followed, together with Succession, Heresy, Treason, and Supremacy Acts, and an “Abjuration on Papal Supremacy by the Clergy.”
This separation of the English Church from Rome meant that instead of a dual control there would now be only one, the King. (He did have the grace to emphasize, as did the Articles afterwards, that he claimed the “potestas jurisdictionis” and never the “potestas ordinis,” but no one noticed. They still don’t.) The doctrinal situation remained otherwise the same until the publication in 1536 of the King’s Ten Articles, after the failure of his bishops to come to any agreement. Their aim was to secure unity and concord, and Foxe the Martyrologist describes them very accurately as meant for “weaklings newly weaned from their mother’s milk of Rome!” Five deal with doctrines—the Bible, Creeds, and first four councils, as the standard of orthodoxy: the necessity of baptism and penance; the Real Presence in the Eucharist; faith as well as charity necessary for salvation; etc. While images were to be retained and saints invoked, their value was carefully qualified, as was the teaching on Purgatory and praying for the dead. Professor Lindsay notes the similarity of teaching with Luther’s “Babylonish Captivity.” Interpreted as they must be by the Injunctions of the same year and of 1538, these Articles merit Foxe’s comment, not least for the command to provide “one whole Bible of the largest volume in English” to be set up in church, a regular quarterly sermon on the Gospel, and the condemnation of superstition and idolatry. The Bishop’s Book modified the reforming tendency somewhat, but mercifully did not affect the position of the Bible, the Great Bible, then Cranmer’s as it had been Matthew’s and Roger’s. Cromwell, incidentally, seems to have been glad to have this Bible printed for he had some financial interests in the printing. The years 1533–39 saw a distinct advance in the reforming direction, including the Dissolution of the Monasteries, which by splitting up the monastic lands among the rising gentry effectively rooted the Reformation in the pockets, and thus in the hearts of many in England. Then followed retrogressive steps with finally a glimmer of hope toward the end of Henry’s reign.
The Pilgrimage of Grace of 1539 and the associated risings in Lincolnshire suggested to Henry that the Reformation was being pressed a little too hastily for the majority of the English laity, and the resulting six questions put to Parliament resulted in the Act of Six Articles of the same year, a ferocious statute commonly called the Whip with Six Strings. To deny Transubstantiation or deprave the Sacraments was burnable heresy, while various other religious offences became felonies punishable by death. At the outset more severe in theory than in enforcement, it became fiercest in the latter years of Henry’s reign.
Cromwell had meanwhile tried to ally his master with the Lutheran princes, but the difference between the advertisement and the reality in the charms of his new bride Anne of Cleves was too much for Henry—and for Cromwell, who followed Wolsey into disgrace but into a crueler death. Two days later Henry gave a brutal exposition of his views—Barnes, Garrett, and Jerome were burnt as Lutherans on one side of Smithfield while three Romans were tortured and beheaded for denying the king’s spiritual supremacy on the other side. The reign can be said to close theologically with the King’s Book of 1543, restating among other things Transubstantiation, the celibacy of the clergy and invocation of the saints. In spite of the growing movement toward an evangelical reformation it must be said that this work fairly accurately represented the outlook of most Englishmen in that year.
With the accession of the godly young Josiah, Edward VI (1547) and the protectorships of Somerset and then Warwick, the tempo of reform accelerated too fast for any but the financial gainers. There was a royal visitation of the churches, together with the repeal of the Six Articles and many other heresy and treason laws. Convocation asked for communion in both kinds, marriage of the clergy, and the removal of superstitions, and the first Prayer Book was passed. This end of the first stage of the Reformation under Edward was marked by the failure of Somerset, himself a moderate reformer with too much sympathy for the underdog, and too much gentleness to survive the onslaughts of the unscrupulous Warwick-Northumberland who took over the Protectorship and hurried on the Reformation to his own great personal profit—financially. The great number of continental refugees seeking safety in England helped on the reformer’s task, although then as now one could never please everyone. Cranmer’s Forty-two Articles were the last significant theological production of the reign of a physically weak young man with whose death in 1553 the apparent collapse of the Reformation showed both the rapidity and also the shakiness of the building.
Of Mary’s reign we need say nothing further than that she besought Parliament to return England to the Roman obedience which, at their third re-election they did; to re-enact the heresy laws; and to welcome Philip of Spain as her husband. A pitiful and pathological specimen, she caused within three and a half years the death by burning of nearly three hundred reformers of all ranks and ages, and both sexes, not to count the many who perished in prison from hunger or torture; and thus earned for herself and her faith the undying aversion of the English people.
The Elizabethan Settlement included the restoration of the modified Second Prayer Book, thirty-nine of the forty-two Articles, and the Queen’s very definite supremacy. To go further into her reign would lead us straight into that Puritan controversy which we started to consider in this conference two years ago.
Leader of the English Reformation
Born into the lower squirearchy at Aslacton or Aslockton in Nottinghamshire in mid-1489, Cranmer later commented on his very hard and unpleasant schooling that it had “permanently damaged both the good memory and the natural audacity with which he had been endowed as a child.” While we can allow that some of this may merely have been the standard humanist criticism of fifteenth-century education (see Erasmus or Elyot) and we can marvel at what his memory would have been if it had remained unharmed, yet if true this charge would go some way toward explaining Cranmer’s respect for authority and his occasional subserviency. He entered Cambridge at the age of fourteen, took the normal degrees and in time became Fellow and Reader in Divinity of Jesus College, and University Preacher, having wisely declined a post at Wolsey’s new Cardinal College in the older university.
However it was that in 1529 he came into the service of a king exasperated by the deceits and procrastinations of the Papacy, he immediately proved of value to his master, and after writing convincingly on Henry’s behalf and collecting opinions from continental universities, he was recalled from his Ambassadorship at the Imperial Court to become in 1532 the new Archbishop of Canterbury. (Henry with characteristic Tudor discernment of men had laid hands on one who was to be the truest, and the most honest, and the sincerest servant that he ever had—and his affection and regard for Cranmer suggest that he knew this himself.) The necessary annulment was at once carried out, although Cranmer knew nothing of Henry’s marriage with Anne until a fortnight after the event. Anne’s child Elizabeth was born and Fisher and More died for denying the Royal Supremacy spiritual. Cromwell as Vice-Regent took over the land’s episcopal duties, but his fall just after the Act of Six Articles left Cranmer in a most dangerous position. He alone seems to have resisted that Act. Although he claims that it was the personal appearance of the King in the Lords which carried the day against him, and Cromwell’s Attainder and execution was universally expected to draw that of Cranmer in its train. He seems to have survived because of the King’s trust in and regard for him, and because of his undoubted value—for Henry was no altruist—to the King. (He had just pronounced the sentence terminating the third Royal non-marriage, this time from Anne of Cleves.)
For some years after the failure of Cromwell’s Lutheran alliance, Cranmer was under attack from many quarters. Not least was that of his own Canterbury Prebendaries, culminating in a set of Articles presented to Henry in April 1533. Morice, Cranmer’s secretary, tells how Henry was passing Lambeth Bridge in his barge in the evening and called Cranmer down to him. “Aha, my chaplain,” he said, “I have news for you. I know now who is the greatest heretic in Kent.” He then showed him the articles, and in answer to the request for a commission of inquiry appointed Cranmer himself as chief commissioner, in spite of his demurs. “I will have none other but yourself, and such as you will appoint,” said the King, “for I am sure that you will not halt with me in anything, although you be driven to accuse yourself.” As usual when his own interests were at stake, Cranmer did nothing, and after six weeks the King appointed his own inquisitor and the plot was laid bare, although at Cranmer’s request most of the plotters were pardoned. Within a month a more dangerous plot against him was dismissed by Henry with a sound berating of the Privy Council instigators, and Cranmer was no more troubled, at least in that reign.
The next years saw Cranmer busy in the Council, at work on his Litany, and then more, in 1546, in his own Diocese. Here it seems most likely that in discussion with Ridley he came to repudiate the Real Presence in the Sacrament which he had held, and which he had persecuted others for opposing, for at least thirteen years, and came to the doctrine he later died to defend. But first his master was to die, and at his death sought for the only true and honest friend of a strong and despotic reign. The feeling was mutual, for Cranmer so mourned his loss that from then on he let his beard grow unchecked until his dying day.
While he respected Protector Somerset, he was not one to rush ahead, and indeed would have preferred a slower Reformation under a stronger king. Cautious and conservative himself, he came slowly to his own convictions, and he did not attempt to press them hastily on others. The first task was to restrain the more revolutionary elements; the second was to convince the reactionaries, although his first prayer book of course pleased neither. The book contributed to the revolt which led to Somerset’s downfall, but worse than that, Gardiner claimed that the Mass and Real Presence were still clearly taught—a contention that may account for the widespread use of this 1549 Book in the Anglican Communion in preference to the 1552–1662 Book. So Cranmer set to work to stop those loopholes by 1552, at the same time compiling a new ordinal, and completed his three major works before the crash came. His other aim, a revision of the Canon Law, came no further than a draft version, concise, lucid, with suggestions such as that of Diocesan Synods of clergy and laity, which could have been of great value. His last work was the common doctrinal confession, finally published just before the young king’s death in the summer of 1553, a confession clearly Reformed but not too narrowly defined, aiming to comprehend rather than to exclude.
His lasting three-fold contribution was thus completed—English Bible, Prayer Book, and Confession of Faith—and these more than even the political enactments of King and Council revolutionized church and nation. It was only just in time, for within six weeks the king was dead. For the next two and a half years Cranmer had to endure the distressing spectacle of his life’s work undone, his doctrine attacked, his friends tortured and executed. He himself was subjected to every kind of physical, mental, and moral pressure, so that it was only through shame and weakness that at the last he witnessed a good confession, thrusting first into the flame and holding there until consumed that right hand which had signed the recantations he abhorred. Whatever may be said four centuries later, it was quite true that “after 21st March 1556 there was no more criticism of Cranmer in Protestant circles.”
Principles of the English Reformation
The basic principles underlying the English Reformation as Cranmer understood them and inscribed them for others were as follows. Basic to everything, as it had been from the early days of Cranmer’s ministry, was THE PRIMACY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. While seen most perfectly in his work on The True and Catholic Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, where his first concern is to establish the doctrine from an examination of the relevant passages of Scripture, article six of the Thirty-nine Articles is magnificently explicit on the point, “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.” Here is the Reformation battle cry of Sola Scriptura. (Since the other doctrines are based on this principle, and since discussion must be largely a matter of exegesis, we shall not enlarge on justification, the Church, ministry, sacraments, etc.)
Second, it was Cranmer’s aim as a conservative thinker and an Englishman to retain as close a continuity as possible with the Church of the past. He therefore, like Luther, retained everything that he safely could, only discarding those practices which were clearly wrong, for he believed that the Holy Spirit had guided the Church down the ages, and that without clear leading to the contrary it was entirely wrong to reject the past out of hand. This principle, the corollary of the foregoing one, is expounded in Article Thirty-four, Of the Traditions of the Church: “It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one and utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times and men’s manners”—that is to say that every church has traditions and ceremonies, even the Brethren, but here is the point—So that nothing be ordained against God’s Word. NOTHING EXCEPT GOD’S WORD FOR SALVATION, AND NOTHING AGAINST GOD’S WORD FOR EDIFICATION. These are the two fundamentals, and the others follow from these. The authority of the Church is the development of Cranmer’s anti-individualistic beliefs, while the relation of Church and State draws from his view of the Sovereign, and both, he would claim, are based on Scripture only.
Character of Thomas Cranmer
What can we say of the chief English Reformer? Was he “an amiable and successful scholar” but “an irresolute and ineffective archbishop whose character degenerated year by year under the strain which his responsibilities imposed?” He was for one thing amazingly loyal to his friends, in both private and public. He alone dared to plead to the king for Anne Boleyn, for More and Fisher, for the Princess Mary, and for Thomas Cromwell, when all around were dissociating themselves from the accused with maximum speed and condemning their wickedness vociferously. His private letters to Cromwell were packed with requests, it is true, but they were never for himself, always for others, and this same lack of covetousness showed in all his financial dealings. He gained not one penny from the dissolution of the monasteries and other Reformation plunder, and he complained more than once that his financial state as an archbishop was far worse than when he had been a university don. That he was without guile and utterly sincere is shown not only by the trust Henry placed in him, and by the testimony of many, but above all by his behavior during the various plots against him. His theological learning was proverbial, and surely another title to Henry’s favor, for the King himself was no mean scholar. “For at all times when the king’s majesty would be resolved in any doubt or question he would send word to my Lord overnight, and by the next day the king should have in writing brief notes of the doctor’s minds, as well divines as lawyers, both ancient old and new, with a conclusion of his own mind. He . . . would advise the king more in one day than all his learned men could do in a month.”
He has been accused of unnecessary subserviency to the monarch, although to say this is surely to forget the nature of both the King and the century. His early schooling could be somewhat to blame, as could his theological principles, while the charge that he was a traitor to reform because he was present at the trials of Frith and others is surely to assume that he had come to a reformed position—and concealed it!!—far earlier than can at all be proved. It always seems very unfair to blame a man in the midst of the hurly-burly of government for not seeing the future as clearly as we can see it now. To criticize Cranmer, as some do, for not behaving as if from the outset of his work he had a clear vision, not only of his first and second prayer books, but even a third, before his eyes, is to betray one’s own immaturity as a scholar, to say nothing stronger. That he was more lenient to Romanists he himself explained thus: “What will ye have me do to him that is not yet come to the truth of the gospel . . . severity, cruel behavior . . . ? I take not this way to allure men to embrace the doctrine of the gospel.” But let an enemy sum him up. “He had in his favor a dignified presence, adorned with a semblance of goodness, considerable reputation for learning, and manners so courteous, kindly and pleasant that he seemed like an old friend to those he encountered for the first time. He gave signs of modesty, seriousness and application.”
And what were his basic principles? Apart from the two we have noted above, I think that Cranmer’s supposed confusions and contradictions can on the basis of Occam’s Razor be explained by just two verses of Scripture: (1) Romans 13:1 and following, “The powers that be are ordained of God.” The king was the divinely appointed ruler, and he was therefore to be implicitly obeyed (Article Thirty-seven). (Only at the end did Cranmer see that in fact More had been right and that the individual conscience had a more final authority than the public ruler, but his hesitation in struggling through to this belief showed how strongly he had held the other, and explains much that is otherwise difficult for us to understand.)
(2) 2 Peter 1:20, “No prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation.” In other words, Cranmer believed most earnestly in the corporate nature of the Church, and of the duty of the individual where necessary to submit to the judgment of the body. He expressed his view very fully in the Preface on Ceremonies in the Book of Common Prayer, but we quote from Article Twenty, “The Church hath power to decree rites and ceremonies . . .” and Thirty-four (continuing where we left off above), “Whosoever through his private judgment, willingly, and purposely, doth openly break the traditions and ceremonies of the Church which be not repugnant to the Word of God, and be ordained and approved by common authority, ought to be rebuked openly . . . as he that offendeth against the common order of the Church, and hurteth the authority of the Magistrate and woundeth the consciences of the weak brethren.” This may well explain his determination against some of the Reformers who had as yet gone further than himself, for they seemed to set themselves individually above the Church, and Cranmer had seen for himself in Germany the excesses of Anabaptistry to which this could lead.
Two final difficulties face us all in the examination of characters from another age, the twin difficulties of atmosphere and prejudice. Let Pollard speak here, “Cranmer has been termed the most mysterious figure in the English Reformation. The obscurity is not in his character but in the atmosphere which he breathed, and atmosphere is the most difficult of all things recreate. As a rule there are no materials for it. To the people who live in it a political or religious atmosphere is a familiar thing which needs no explanation and therefore is not recorded in documents. Then the atmosphere changes, and can only be recalled to posterity by an observation and reflection compared with which the mere ascertainment of facts is easy.” We must make the effort to understand the atmosphere of the sixteenth century, and thus when faced with an action or inaction which we tend to condemn, we must first seek an honest explanation before labeling the person a rogue or a knave. This leads straight into our other difficulty, that of prejudice. We are all guilty here, and it will not save us to conjugate the verb, “He is prejudiced, you are obstinate, I am clear-sighted.” Let us at least be aware of our prejudices. Many of our present-day concepts and beliefs are the direct fruit of this period and therefore of our English Reformation. (Take for instance our ideas of the freedom and duty of individual private judgment.) We must not give way to the temptation to judge Cranmer as if he were a mid-twentieth century evangelical Christian among mid-twentieth century Englishmen. Brought up as, educated by, and for most of his life surrounded by, convinced or at least determined Papalists and Scholastics, he must be judged in his own era, and by his own biblical principles first, and only then by other biblical principles which we feel he may not have grasped.
“Nothing except Scripture for salvation, nothing against Scripture for edification.” All right! But, Romans 13 and the Supremacy of the Sovereign, and 2 Peter 1 and the Primacy of the Church. Could this man have been an evangelical Christian? He came at the last to the Sovereignty—under God and His Word—of the Individual Conscience, and so he came at the last to the stake for that belief. Let us therefore remind ourselves that he was truly such a man of God as we might covet to be, by closing with perhaps his most moving memorial, the prayer which he wrote in the night he prepared to die, and which he prayed before his final recantation and martyrdom:
O Father of heaven: O Son of God, Redeemer of the World; O Holy Ghost, proceeding from them both, three persons and one God, have mercy on me most wretched caitiff and miserable sinner. I who have offended both heaven and earth, and more grievously than any tongue can express, whither then may I go, or whither should I fly for succour? To heaven I may be ashamed to lift up mine eyes; and in earth I find no refuge. What shall I then do; shall I despair? God forbid. O good God, thou art merciful, and refusest none that come to thee for succor. To thee therefore do I run. To thee do I humble myself saying, O Lord God, my sins be great, but yet have mercy upon me for thy great mercy. O God the Son, thou wast not made man, this great mystery was not wrought for few or small offenses. Nor thou didst not give thy Son unto death O God the Father, for our little and small sins only, but for all the greatest sins of the world; so that the sinner return unto thee with a penitent heart, as I do here at this present. Wherefore have mercy upon me, O Lord, whose property is always to have mercy. For although my sins be great, yet thy mercy is greater. I crave nothing, O Lord, for mine own merits, but for thy name’s sake, that it may be glorified thereby; and for thy dear Son Jesus Christ’s sake.