BOOK to perish by this terrible death." The fiery vengeance was even extended to the bones of the dead, whose living sensibility was beyond the reach of the persecutors. Great numbers of the most learned and respectable persons of the country emigrated abroad," as no alternative remained, if they adhered 26 should so require.' ib. 174. In September 1555, he sent his commission to Oxford, to examine and judge Latimer and Ridley; and if they did not recant, to yield them to receive punishments due to all such heresy and schism, Foxe, 1595; that is, to be burnt, as they were. 6 25 On 7th July 1558, only four months before his death, he sent his certificate to the queen, that the five persons he named, two of them females, had confessed and defended their heresies; and as the saneta mater ecclesia had nothing else which she could do, we leave the said heretics and relapsed, to your secular arm condigna animadversione plectendos.' p. 174. Collier dates it 17th July. p. 89. On 13th November following, the queen and her husband's writ was issued to the sheriff, reciting that Bonner had manifested to them some heresies, and decreed them to be left to the secular forum; therefore they being willing to defend mother church, 'et quantum in nobis est,' they command that these heretics' coram populo igni committi; et in eodem igne realiter combini facias.' in Wilk. 174. Now, as Philip was then out of England, and Pole was archbishop of Canterbury and Mary's prime minister, it is impossible to suppose that this writ was issued against his will, or without his sanction. Bonner was the last man to have opposed his superior will; he lived, as he once intimated, for his pudding;' see before, p. 149, note 91; and therefore would not have counteracted Pole. Nor was this mandate Bonner's act; it only recites his certificate; it was not issued by him; a higher power than his commanded the burning, and the director of the royal will and conscience, who was Pole, may be assumed to have been that person. This instrument was issued only four days before Mary's death. 28 The condemnation and burning of the bones of Bucer and Phagius at Cambridge, were done in full communication with Gardiner. The whole process of this solemn absurdity is detailed by Foxe, pp. 1774-82. The effect was so ludicrous, that we find that the very country boors laughed, while they abhorred, at hearing dead men cited to answer for their heresy, and at seeing the Romish officials carrying out the dug-up bones to burn them in the public market-place. Foxe, 1781. We must, however, in justice add, that absurd and revolting as it was to burn the bones of the dead as a vindictive punishment, the malice of the thought did not originate with these Marian persecutors; the act was decreed by a previous council, among other malignities against heretics; and the decree still remains in force and unrepealed. 27 Peter Martyr wrote to Calvin in 1554, that there was every where a flight of good men, who could possibly get away.' He had escaped to Strasburg. Strype's Eccl. Mem. v. 3. p. 6. This worthy author has XV. to their conscientious convictions, but destructive CHAP. rebellion, or the miserable death of the slow-consuming stake.28 collected an enumeration of those who became voluntary exiles for religion only. Some settled at Frankfort; some at Basle, and read lectures there; others, and an archbishop of York, at Wezel and Friesland. Knox, who had been king Edward's chaplain, and was destined to be the great reformer of Scotland, resided with several at Geneva; at Strasburg, several knights, Grindall and Sandys, who became archbishops of Canterbury and York, and many others. Several went to Zurich; and among these, two who were afterwards the bishops of Durham and Litchfield. P. Martyr joined them, with Jewel, and became professor of divinity there. They were kindly treated by the Swiss ministers, Bullinger and Bibliander, and by the magistrates and people. The expressions applied to them do an honor to Zurich which ought not to be forgotten; incredibilis humanitas et civium omnium omnia officia charitatis plenissima.' Strype, p. 231-3. Several of them wrote and printed tracts in support of their principles. Knox was invited to Frankfort, to be the pastor of the English congregation there. ib. 236. Other persons emigrated from the persecuting government to Paris, Orleans, and Rouen; and some to Venice and Padua. ib. 244. Gardiner was so enraged at their escape, that he declared he would make them eat their fingers for hunger. ib. 403. 28 We have two specimens of the sufferings to which this selected mode of death exposes the victims, in what occurred at the burnings of both the bishops Hooper and Ridley. In Hooper's catastrophe, the faggots were brought green, and therefore burnt slowly and with difficulty around him. As they flamed, the wind blew the fire from him, so much that he was scorched instead of being burnt. When they got some dry wood, this burnt his lower parts, but on account of the wind, only tortured his upper body, so that when this supply was consumed, he was in full life, and, wiping his eyes with both his hands, called out, For God's love, good people! let me have more fire.' His legs and thighs were burning, but not his trunk, because the faggots were so few." A third fire was then kindled, but so ineffectually, that the bladders of gunpowder which he had from the beginning placed under his arm, and for which his persecutors reviled him as intending suicide, did not explode. His tongue was seen to swell, till he could not be heard to pray, yet his lips moved till they shrunk to his gums. He then struck his breast with his hands till one of his arms fell off. Yet he was so alive as to use the other, the blood and melted matter oozing from the fingers end, till at length his head fell forwards, and he expired. Foxe, 1373. I do not believe that his torment was intentionally protracted, but I quote the circumstances, as shewing the horrible nature of this kind of execution. Ridley's is another instance of similar horrors, tho the kindness of relations was allowed to hasten his death. Latimer, on the other side of the stake, was soon surrounded by the flames, and perished; but on Ridley's side, from the evil making of the fire, because the faggots BOOK II. But in pursuing this system of burning, the papal clergy forgot the lessons of their Aristotle-that there are two sources of emotions within us; not terror only, but terror and pity. The executions by conflagration always excited both; and of these, the compassionate was the most lasting and the most distressing feeling. Few could enjoy without compunction the horrors they inflicted. Hence their much loved stake always counteracted its appointed effect, and disappointed their wishes. It roused more indignant sympathy than it spread intimidating fear. The terror was obliterated by the pity, which soon became aversion and enmity to the merciless punishers.20 Nor can we wonder at this result, were laid about the gosse, and over high built, the fire burned first We perceive this effect in the observation of the French ambassador, a zealous Catholic, on the burning of the first sufferer, Rogers: XV. when we perceive how reflecting minds contrasted CHAP. what the reformers had abolished, with what the Romish hierarchy unchangingly retained.30 The reduction of academical education to its antient trammels and enfeebling slavery was a solicitous object with Pole and his coadjutors. One of the greatest benefits of the Reformation to the intellectual improvement of Europe, was the depreciation of the antient scholastic theology, which had superseded the Scriptures, and thereby became one of the most supporting columns of the Catholic Church; because by confining the ecclesiastical education to Peter Lombard's Sentences, and his commentators, no better divinity, and no superior feelings of religion, were known or cultivated. But 31 "This day was performed the confirmation of the alliance between the pope and this kingdom, by a public and solemn SACRIFICE of a preaching doctor named Rogerus, who has been burnt alive for being a Lutheran; but he died persisting in his opinion. At this conduct, the greatest part of the people took such pleasure, that they were not afraid to make him many acclamations to strengthen his courage. Even his children assisted at it, comforting him in such a manner, that it seemed as if he had been led to a wedding.' Noail. lett. 4 Feb. 1555. No words can be more emphatic of the nature and effect of these vile deeds. It was in his opinion un sacrifice' done for 'la confirmation de l'alliance' with the pope; and the spectators huzza'd the sufferers. 30 Melancthon has shewn this difference in the following enumeration of the practices which had been superseded: There was horrible darkness in the church. Human traditions were the destruction of pious minds, and the ceremonies of worship were exceedingly vitious; foolish prayers, indulgences, images, saint-worship, manifest idolatry, a great similitude to Pagan rites. The true doctrine of penitence for remission of sins was unknown. What faith in Christ consists of; justification by faith; the difference between the law and the gospel; the true use of the sacrament-these were all untaught. The keys were perverted into the foundation of a pontifical tyranny. Human ceremonies were preferred to all civil duties. To these was added most profligate habits of life, from the celibacy of the clergy.' Melancth. Op. v. 4. p. 837. "The Oratio for Luther, printed among the works of Melancthon, remarks, that Eckius came forward against Luther expressly as the defender of the scholastic theology, and pitying its down-fall, and BOOK as soon as the New Testament was presented to the young and studious mind, the delightful contrast of its style and lessons attracted and monopolized the attention and feelings: and the wordy dogmatisms and polemical nothingness of the logical theology were abandoned and undervalued.32 The universal experience of this result, both in England and the Continent, occasioned assiduous care to be taken to reinstate compulsorily the study of the antiquated schoolmen. It was therefore authoritatively reestablished at Oxford, with all its appendages and darkening and debilitating consequences.33 All the measures of Mary's bigoted resolution to extinguish by force all dissent, and those dissenting because his friends, who had risen by it, thought their fame and benefit in danger, unless Éckius conquered: and it was by his new stream of argument from the Scriptures, against the old dialectics, that Luther conquered at Leipsic. Mel. Oper. v. 2. p. 40. 32 Cranmer's secretary, R. Morice, thus described Latimer: He had bestowed all his time in the labyrinth study of the school doctors, as Duns Scotus, Dorbel, Thomas Aquinas, Hugh de Victore, with such like. Being mightily affected that way, and perceiving the youth of the university leaving off these tedious authors, and inclined to the reading of the Scriptures; he tried to persuade them to keep to their sophisms and disputations, and to leave off their new-fangled study of the Scriptures. But a lecture of divinity read in the university school by Mr. Stafford, on this new study, so convinced and changed him, that he eagerly adopted what he had condemned, and preached zealously every day on the Gospels and their study. Strype, v. 3. p. 368. 33 Ormaneto, afterwards bishop of Padua, was sent to reform' the two universities: He displaced every heretic, and all suspected of heresy, and placed over it Peter Soto, a Dominican, who had been confessor to Charles V. and eight others of the same order, who restored, says Ribadineira, the solid scholastic theology, and abolished the affected elegance of words with which the heretics were enchanting their hearers.' p. 218. Peter informed Pole, that on visiting the University of Oxford, he had found school divinity greatly neglectedthat no lessons were then publicly read upon it-that he thought it would be expedient to give lectures on the old magistrum scientiarum, and he desired to have the office himself. Pole stated to the king that he had mentioned this proposal to Gardiner, who thought that such an exposition ought to be read there, instead of the Hebrew lecture. Ep. Poli. 5. p. 47. Soto was a Spaniard, and with Garcia, another Spaniard, was made public professor of divinity at Oxford. Strype, p. 475. |