he yet see the absurdities of transubstantiation. This relic of a fallen Church he still held fast. This may account for his acquiescing in the persecution of those who called in question the truth of this dogma. It is no less lamentable than it is derogatory to human nature, that persecution for conscience' or even opinion's sake should ever have been assented to, and more especially by those who otherwise seemed to be actuated with a pure desire to advance the glory of Jesus Christ-a name that ever associates with itself every thing that is amiable-around which cluster all those pacific and mild virtues, which forbid bloodshedding and every species of persecution-and which, therefore, ought to shed such a halo of glory around his sacred name as to shine into darkness every attempt to bring mankind to embrace his religion by coercion.

But in spite of all these pleas for a contrary course, at the time of which we are now speaking, the arm of the civil law was brought in to aid in supporting an opinion for which the Protestants afterward suffered so much themselves. After having declared his firm belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation, Cranmer was brought to sit in judgment upon a man who presumed to differ from him on this point, and to promulgate his opinions. The following account of this melancholy affair we find in the biography before us:

"Such were the sentiments which Cranmer brought with him to the trial of the unhappy Lambert. The real name of this man appears to have been Nicolson. He had been first awakened to a sense of scriptural truth by the preaching of Bilney. He was im prisoned for heresy under Archbishop Warham, but was discharged on Cranmer's accession to the primacy; and then, in order to avoid farther molestation, he assumed the name of Lambert. Having adopted the notions of Zuinglius, respecting the Eucharist, he became known as a Sacramentary-a name equally hateful to papists and to Lutherans. Proceedings were instituted against him as a heretic by Dr. Taylor, to whom he had submitted his opinions in writing; and Cranmer was thus compelled to put him on his defence. In an evil hour, Lambert appealed from the archbishop to the king.

"This appeal was readily entertained by Henry. He had been stigmatized as a protector of heretical pravity. He was now resolved to repel the calumny, by personally sitting in judgment on a heretic. Westminster hall was prepared for the solemnity: and the ill-fated Sacramentary was summoned to appear before his sovereign, surrounded by all the grandeur of his court. Multitudes were assembled on this occasion, from various parts of the kingdom, to witness the zeal, the learning, and the sagacity of the royal moderator. The eye of the prisoner wandered anxiously round this imposing assemblage; and the proceedings were soon opened by Sampson, bishop of Chichester, in a speech which was but ill fitted to relieve his apprehensions. The examination was then commenced by Henry himself. On learning that the culprit was known by two names, Henry told him that he would trust no man with two names, though it were his own brother. Lambert pleaded on his knees that he was

driven to this expedient by persecution; and was beginning to compliment his royal judge on his learning and benignity; but he was sternly interrupted. I came not here,' said the king, 'to hear mine own praises painted out in my presence. Go briefly to the matter.' Confounded by this austerity, the man stood silent. 'Why standest thou still?' said the king; answer plainly, is the body of Christ in the sacrament of the altar, or not? It is present after a manner,' replied Lambert, according to St. Austin. Answer me not from St. Austin, or any other,' rejoined the king; 'but say plainly, is the body of Christ there or not? Being thus pressed home, the prisoner said, 'I deny the Eucharist to be the body of Christ.'-Mark well, then,' said his majesty; 'thou shalt be condemned by Christ's own words, Hoc est corpus meum.' With this magnificent burst of theology, Henry closed his own more immediate part in the disputation; and the controversy was then devolved on the primate and the other bishops.

"The archbishop opened his arguments in a tone of remarkable moderation; and Lambert defended himself with a readiness and dexterity which embarrassed his learned antagonist, astonished the audience, and seemed even to move the king himself. Gardiner was so much alarmed at the turn of the debate, that he rushed into the contest out of his appointed order; and was followed, in succession, by ten other disputants, among whom, of course, were Tonstal and Stokesley. For five hours together was this friendless and solitary man compelled to endure the baiting of his adversaries, and was silenced at last only by weariness and exhaustion. The inhuman controversy lasted till torch-light. The king then demanded of the prisoner whether he would live or die. Lambert replied that he committed his soul to the mercy of God, and his body to the clemency of his majesty. Then,' answered Henry, 'you must die, for I will not be a patron unto heretics;' and immediately he turned to the vicegerent, and ordered him to read the sentence of condemnation. On the day appointed, Lambert went without sadness or fear' to his execution. His sufferings at the stake were horribly protracted. Of all the martyrs,' says Fox, 'who were burned and offered up at Smithfield, none were so cruelly and piteously handled as he.' His lower extremeties were first consumed; and his living body, which was left suspended by the chain that fixed it to the stake, was then violently heaved off by the pikes of the sheriff's halberdiers, and cast into the fire that remained; and there he at length ended his miseries, with the exclamation-None but Christ-none but Christ! "It is mentioned by Fox as a remarkable circumstance, that the doom of Lambert was accomplished by the instrumentality of Gospellers. Rowland Taylor was the man to whom he submitted his propositions. Barnes, on being consulted, advised a reference to the judgment of Cranmer, who, thereupon, was under the necessity of bringing him judicially to question: and Cromwell was the person who pronounced his condemnation. It must, however, be remembered, that these men, though decided patrons of what was contemptuously called the New Learning, were none of them, at that time, Sacramentaries; and that the opinions of Lambert were such as, in their estimation, numbered him among the enemies of Christian concord, and obstructers to the course of the scriptural VOL. VII.-January, 1836.

C

verity. The sentiments of Cromwell are distinctly expressed by him. in a letter to Sir T. Wyatt, the king's ambassador in Germany; though in language which savors rankly of the servility of the courtier. He there describes Lambert as a miserable heretic Sacramentary; and talks sonorously of the princely gravity and inestimable majesty with which his highness exercised the office of supreme head of the Church of England:' and he wishes that the potentates of Christendom could have been present at the scene, since 'undoubtedly they would have much marvelled at his majesty's high wisdom and judgment; and reputed him no otherwise than the mirror and light of all other kings and princes in Christendom.' All this fulsome panegyric is very much in the style and manner of that age. It is altogether worthless as a testimony in favor of Cromwell's master: and it is still worse, if contrasted with the description given by Fox of the fierce countenance' and unfeeling demeanor of the king. But, at all events, it is wholly incredible that such language could have been uttered by any one, whose opinions on the sacramental question were in harmony with those of the accused. With regard to Cranmer, it should always be kept in mind, that the business was not of his seeking-that the delinquent was brought officially before him-that his own conscientious opinions were then in decided opposition to those of the prisoner-and, lastly, that Lambert's chance of mercy would probably have been much more promising, had he been content to leave his case in the hands of the archbishop, instead of appealing to the king.

"Unfortunately, the trial of Lambert was not the only work of the same kind in which the archbishop was involved. For several years past the kingdom had been infested by an influx of Anabaptists from the continent. The name of this sect was derived from their belief that infant baptism was a nullity, and that a repetition of the rite was indispensable to all adults who had received it in their childhood. But with this perversion they combined a multitude of other pernicious principles. They held all liberal arts in utter contempt; they destroyed all books except the Scriptures: they demolished, without remorse, all civil and social institutions; and they made it a matter of conscience to extirpate the ungodly, in order that they might establish the kingdom of Zion. In short, they were the apostles of anarchy, as well as the patrons of misbelief; and, therefore, nothing could be more reasonable than vigorous, though temperate, measures for the suppression of their doctrines. To this duty, however, the king addressed himself with his usual ferocity. In the preceding October, he had issued a commission to the archbishop, and several other prelates and doctors, empowering them to inquire after persons 'suspected for Anabaptists, or for any other damnable heresy ;' and to institute summary proceedings against all that should be obstinate and irreclaimable. A proclamation followed in November, which ranked the Sacramentarians with the Anabaptists, as the fellows of their crime;' and ordered that they should be prosecuted to extremity. In the course of the same month, one man and one woman, both natives of Holland, and both Anabaptists, were delivered to the secular arm, and committed to the flames in Smithfield." But Cranmer himself narrowly escaped the malignant designs of his enemies. Surrounded as he was by bigoted adherents to the

Church of Rome, who strove by every possible method to thwart his attempts to restore the Church to a godly simplicity, and to banish from her pale the many relics of superstition with which she was disgraced, it was only by the utmost vigilance and circumspection that he escaped their fury, or was prevented from falling a victim to their wily intrigues and wicked conspiracies. Take the following accounts of the plots of his enemies, and the manner in which they were defeated :—

"Gardiner was at this time high in the royal confidence and estimation; and it had of late been generally rumored that his intrigues were manifestly taking a wider range. This persuasion was expressed by the popular saying, that 'the bishop of Winchester had bent his bow, and that the shaft was levelled at certain of the head deer.' The sequel proved that, among the game on which his eye was fixed, was Archbishop Cranmer, and a personage still more exalted, even the queen consort of England, Catharine Parr. This lady was the widow of Nevil Lord Latimer, and had been promoted by Henry, in the course of this year, to the dangerous honors of his sixth wife. She was a person of singular virtue, intelligence, and piety; and, in her heart, a decided friend to the doctrines of the Reformation. Her attachment to Protestant principles was sufficiently well known to reanimate, in some degree, the hopes of the Reformers, and to make her an object of hostility and aversion to the papal party, and more especially to the bishop of Winchester. How nearly he and his confederates succeeded in ultimately accomplishing her ruin is related in all the histories of the time. She was, however, most fortunately preserved from their machinations, and was spared to render effective assistance to the Protestant cause in the course of the succeeding reign.

"The primate, as might have been expected, was the other great object of Gardiner's malignity: and his recent exertions for the correction of the diocess of Canterbury appeared to furnish his adversaries with some advantage against him. Great hopes were entertained that his proceedings for that purpose might be found, in some respect or other, at variance with the statute of the Six Articles; which, at that period, was rigorously enforced. The greater portion of the prebendaries of his cathedral were still warmly attached to the ancient system; and they were, consequently, so ill affected toward the archbishop that they could scarcely conceal their malice under a decent exterior of respect. Such men were admirably qualified for the office of conspirators against their diocesan and metropolitan. Deriving great encouragement from the notorious dispositions and powerful influence of Gardiner, they accordingly addressed themselves to the fabrication of a plot for his ruin: and it must be confessed that they pursued their object with unwearied perseverance and consummate craft. A succession of meetings was held, a regular scheme of perjured agency was organized,and at length a voluminous mass of articles was collected. By these the archbishop was charged with discouraging and oppressing all preachers who refused to promote the new doctrines; with removing images which had never been honored in any superstitious manner; and with various other unlawful abuses of his power; and, lastly,

he was accused of holding a constant correspondence with the heretics of Germany. When the whole of these papers were complete, they were delivered by the prebendaries to the council, and were then speedily deposited in the hands of Henry. His majesty, after perusing them, ordered the chancellor to see certain of the witnesses, and to inform them that they might boldly speak to all matters within their knowledge, fearing none but God and the king.

"It so happened that, shortly before this, the king had detected the activity of the bishop of Winchester, in forwarding something of a similar design, against several persons about the court who were known to favor the Gospel; and the discovery began to impress him with a deep personal dislike for this crafty and unscrupulous prelate. Accordingly, no sooner had he well considered the papers against Cranmer, than it rushed into his mind that the whole could be nothing more than a confederacy for his destruction, and that Gardiner was the life and soul of the design. Upon this conviction he acted with his usual promptness. He, one evening, ordered his barge, and repaired immediately to Lambeth, carrying with him the articles in his sleeve: and as soon as the primate appeared on the steps by the water side, he called him into the barge, and said to him, 'O my chaplain, now I know who is the greatest heretic in Kent!' He then produced the papers and desired Cranmer to inspect them. The astonishment and agitation of the archbishop were excessive, on finding that members of his own Church, who were under obligation to him, and magistrates whom he had treated with kindness and respect, were now engaged in an atrocious league against him. He immediately kneeled down before the king, and solicited that the whole affair should be sifted by a commission. 'A commission,' said the king, 'there shall be; but the archbishop of Canterbury shall be the chief commissioner, with such colleagues as he himself shall be pleased to appoint.' It was to no purpose for Cranmer to remonstrate against the apparent partiality of such an arrangement. The king was inflexible; and Cranmer was compelled to plunge into the labyrinth of this painful investigation: till Henry, finding that he was in danger of being baffled by the artifices of his accusers, sent Dr. Leigh and Dr. Rowland Taylor (the martyr) to bring the matter to a speedy conclusion. The new commissioners proceeded with the necessary vigor and despatch. The houses of several of the conspirators were searched; and the result was the complete unravelling of a tissue of falsehood, perjury, and ingratitude which would have been disgraceful even to men whose regular trade was villany and fraud. Among the correspondence found in their chests, some letters were discovered from the bishop of Winchester; others from Thornden and Dr. Barber, who had both experienced the benevolence of the primate. The former of these worthless men, Thornden, was once a monk of Canterbury, and the first prebendary of the Church, when it became a college of secular canons. He was, soon after, made suffragan of the diocess, with the title of Bishop of Dover. He never attended the archbishop without being invited to a seat at his own high table, an honor at that time seldom conferred on persons of his rank: and now he was found among the practisers against the reputation and the life of his patron. The submission of these wretches was as abject as