0 in the sacrament is Christe himself, spiritually; the thing absent is Christe's body, corporally.” Then following out the analogy of a seal, he infers that disrespect for the consecrated elements would be like trampling on the seal of a king's pardon as “two pennyworth of wax." Having commenced with a resolution to appeal only to Scripture as an authority, and satisfactorily made out his case from the gospels and epistles, he gives a brief sketch of the history of transubstantiation and the mass. A few mistakes may be detected in it; however, it shews very considerable learning; and the quotations from the Fathers are apposite. But, alas, for the spirit that developes itself as the subject warms him-his contempt for the opinions, his hatred to the persons, of his opponents. Whole pages occur which remind us of puritanism in the vigour of its second jubilee : “I perceave hy a friend's letter of mine of late in a certayne churche in Inglond was an inquisicion made for the bible by the kynges maiestes officeers, that instede of the bible found the leffte arme of one of those chartechouse monkes tbat died in the defense of the Byshope of Romo reverently byd in the bygh aulter of the church with a writing conteyning the day and cause of his deathe............I trust to byre that the kynges maiestie never put his officers to great payne to bring them to Tiburn, but put them to death in the churche upon the same aulter wberin the relique was hyd, and burnt there the bones of the treterous ydolatraes, with the relique as Josijahu did all the false pristes, 4 Reg. 2. 3. And the doying therof shuld not have suspended the churche at all, but bave byn a better blíssing therof tben all the blissins of the bysbopes of the worold, for God lovith those that be zealous for his glorie.”. If papists were to be disarmed by the quiet submissiveness of their opponents, and taught to contrast their own cruelty with protestant moderation, this was not exactly the way to accomplish such ends ; and if English reformers were to take the tone of their countrymen abroad when writing on so sacred a subject, they could scarcely have had a worse opening. This was the more to be regretted since Ridley and Cranmer were at this very time engaged in a course of investigations which issued in their renouncing a tenet they hitherto had held with all sincerity.t Hooper had been convinced by the works of Zuingle and Bullinger, Ridley by the tract of Bertram, that no transubstantiation took place in the bread and wine; and although there was sufficient difference between the masters, their disciples came to very similar conclusions. Ridley communicated the change of his views to Cranmer in 1546, the very year whe Gardiner's “Detection” made its appearance: in 1547 when Hooper's reply was published, they were both studying the subject, but had by no means gone his lengths. In January of that year, Henry died; and the obstacle to controversy was in a great measure removed by the early repeal of the Six Articles. It was most providential that at this juncture, and not before, the primate should have been led to entertain views which, at an earlier period, must have precipitated him from his chair, and that the recency of his conversion enabled him to lead the popular mind by the very steps which had been taken by his own. To effect this he licensed, and probably procured, the publication of Answer to My Lord of Winchester. Signat. Q. 2. # Wordsworth’s Ecc. Biog. "The Boke of Barthram, Priest, in treatinge of the Bodye and Bloude of Christe, in 1548," which was followed by the Book of Common Prayer in the same year. But it seems not improbable that before this last had issued from the press, having obtained the sanction of the legislature, the primate had overshot the statements of the former; since John a Lasco is said to have brought him to entertain sounder sentiments concerning the Supper. This statement occurs in a letter from John ab Ulmis, dated Nov. 28, 1548,* and taken in connexion with the appearance of Hooper's book, A Lasco's intimate and too faithful friend-taken also with the fact that much of the archbishop's reasoning may be found in embryo there, goes far towards making it probable that Hooper was partially instrumental in the change. Gardiner, now universally recognised by the Romanists as the leader of their party, watched the operations of the reformers with a jealous eye, but a compliant conduct. Imprisoned on a frivolous pretext by the council, and thus secluded from his privileges as a peer, he could make no stand against them in his legislative capacity. He even recommended his clergy to receive the royal visitors, and obey their injunctions,† spoke in terms of modified approbation concerning the First Prayer Book, and evidently intended, as far as it could be done without compromising his adherents, to swim with the stream, had that liberty been allowed him. Unhappily, the reforming party in the council determined to goad him into a public and express declaration from the pulpit of a political and religious creed of their own dictation. Gardiner resisted with magnanimity. Immured in the Tower, and subjected to numerous privations, he spoke and acted like a philosopher and a Christian.§ Cranmer saw the ground as clear as the council dared to make it, -the worst, and perhaps the best, Romanists in prison, the malignants who would scruple at no measure to support their cause, and the holy men whose characters shed a lustre on its decline,-when he published the work on which his literary reputation chiefly rests. In 1550 appeared "A Defence of the true Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ, with a Confutation of sundry Errors concerning the same." It is a book of great erudition. Cranmer alone could have brought from his own stores no small array of quotations; but in this remarkable controversy there is reason to believe that every one of the three champions was largely indebted to his friends. * Cardwell's Introd. to the two Prayer-books of Edward, p. xii. † Ecc. Mem. II. i. 112. Godwin, Annal. 92, ascribes his imprisonment chiefly to his preaching on the Eucharist. Yet the sermon was not offensive in any just sense of the word; see it reported by no friendly hand in Foxe, 1680. Burnet Ref. Coll. Rec. II. 157. This was probably the case with Hooper, from his great familiarity with and attachment to the scholars of Zurich. Certainly with Cranmer, who, beside his unavowed obligations to Ridley and Peter Martyr, had Peter Alexander in his em. ploy, collecting materials for him. Ecc. Mem. II. i. 321. Watson and Smith collected Gardiner's matter for him, yet "considering himself." The primate was hardly Nothing could be more complete than the exposure of many popish errors; but whether Cranmer ever accurately determined in his own mind a line of demarcation between an essential presence in the elements, and no presence at all beyond that implied in the fact that God is everywhere, may, after a careful perusal of his book, be doubted; whether in fact he has not involved himself to some inconsiderable extent in the same kind of logical difficulties which his opponent experienced when attempting to prove the propitiatory value of the mass. The subject was one that required time, and came to be better understood in the next century. It speaks well for Cranmer, however, that notwithstanding the very gradual change of his own opinions, (a fact which his reputed assertion of the contrary is not well authenticated enough to refute,) he has scarcely written a sentence that will not bear an orthodox interpretation concerning the sacrament. A reply to such an attack as this was probably expected from the bishop of Winchester. Although confined with rigour, he managed to produce one; not perhaps all that his party could desire, nor as able as his first book, composed under more favourable circumstances, but adorned with all that fearlessness which is characteristic of a man who has determined to stand at all hazards to his own convictions of the truth. It is entitled, "An Explication and Assertion of the true Catholic faith touching the most blessed Sacrament of the Altar, with Confutation of a Book written against the same, made by Steven bishop of Winchester, and exhibited by his own hand for his Defence, to the King's Majesties Commissioners at Lambeth, 1551." Such, at least, was the mode he adopted for its publication in the January of that year. Its name, however, is ill-deserved; for although the work was happily described by Martyr as a Pandora's box, to which every papist contributed something, the crude matter owed him less than might have been expected from his abilities: and the same opponent is scarcely too severe in taking up a simile of his own, and comparing him to a cook, so full of business, and so crowded by underlings in a smoky kitchen, as to spoil the viands he attempts to dress. Cranmer answered this book in a long and learned, but rather desultory reply. It appears, however, to have been read with eagerness excusable for calling him " Esop's chough, which plumed himself with other birds' feathers."-Works, 111. 253. The dispute whether bread and wine were " signa Christi præsentis exhibitiva," or "signa Christi absentis commemorativa," scarcely disturbed the English reformers in Edward's reign, (see Cardwell's Hist. of Confer. p. 3.) A Lasco and Hooper, the low-church leaders, seem to have been thorough adiaphorists on this subject. A Lasco, who can write off hand "le pain rompu et le vin verse signifient, tesmoignent et representent beaucoup de chose," (Liturgie, f. 123,) on another occasion writes like a Christian and a divine; see Pref. to Cranmer's Rem. LXXX. Hooper says, "Where Christes institution is trewly observed, there is nothing but a memory of his death."-Ans. to Gardiner. Sign. I. 3. Yet knowing, as he must have known, that a large number of English reformers thought otherwise, and maintained with Redmayn (Foxe, 1312), that Christ was present "sic spiritualiter ut tamen vere," he can also write" de cœna omnes Angli recte sentiunt." "An aunswere by the reverend father in God, Thomas, Archbyshop of Canterbury, Primate of all England and Metropolitane, unto a craftie and sophisticall cavillation, devised by Stephen Gardiner, Doctour of Law, late byshop of Win and speedily reprinted. A short collection, appended to the later editions, of "Matters wherein Gardiner varied from other Papists," "Matters wherein Gardiner varied from himself," and "Concessa," would alone be enough to prove that the work from which they were extracted was written in haste, and probably in the absence of the books it quoted.* Apart, however, from the solid worth of many of its demonstrations, and the venerated name of the author, its personalities gave it a zest which made it more lively then than it is at present. This exposure appeared in the autumn of 1551, and was replied to with equal promptitude by Gardiner, under a feigned name, in Latin. "Confutatio cavillationum quibus sacrosanctum Eucharistiæ sacramentum ab impiis Capernaitis impeti solet, autore Marco Antonio Constantio, Theologo Lovanensi." It was printed in Paris in the August of 1552. It can, however, scarcely be called an answer to Cranmer, being rather a set of dialogues illustrative of certain commonplaces from the Fathers. In the first part, "Sectarius' is made to state objections which Catholicus removes; in the second, the latter propounds difficulties in the protestant views which the former solves, and is answered. What induced Gardiner to resort to a learned language is not apparent-not surely the hope of continental fame. The long, involved sentences of the explication did not proceed from any inability to write English, but from the feeling Mirabeau confessed, that the only way to speak eloquently was to understand perfectly. Hence the hortatory passages of Constantius are worthy of Gardiner, but the change of language which enabled him to dress up a quintain for a warrior is almost the only new feature in the debate. Even with this advantage he is evidently and repeatedly annoyed by the way in which the Fathers will speak the language, if not the meaning, of the reformers and common sense, and miserably at a loss for any answer to that argument from the analogy of the two sacraments which Cranmer so repeatedly urged, and on which he so much. depended.+ chester, agaynst the true and godly doctrine of the most holy sacrament of the body and bloud of our Saviour Jesu Christ, wherein is also as occasion serveth aunswered such places of the booke of Doct. Richard Smith as may seeme any thyng worthy the answering." Be it observed, the literary profligate last mentioned in this title had told Cranmer he should be forced by his patrons to write against him, unless the archbishop, with whose opinions he sincerely coincided, would shew him favour. For instance." The body of Christ is not made of bread." "Of bread is made the body of Christ." "When an unrepentant sinner receiveth the sacrament, he hath not Christ's body within him." "An evil man in the sacrament receiveth indeed Christ's very body." "The inward nature of the bread is the substance." "Substance signifies the outward nature." "St. Augustine's rule de Doctrina Christiana pertaineth not to Christ's supper." "St. Augustine meaneth of the sacrament." Cran. Rem. III., 558-562. "Certe ea est istorum sectariorum astutia ut loquantur interdum cum Catholicis, sentiant nihilominus cum hæreticis." "Isti mysteria religionis nostræ vel ignorant vel confundunt."-Confut. M.A. Const. f. 188. 9. The archbishop took measures to prevent the garbled statements of this volume from injuring the character of the English church, by publishing Latin editions of his Defence and Answer. He then applied himself to a particular and detailed refutation of the work, and completed three books, which appear to have been irretrievably lost, as the learned editor of his remains has discovered no traces of them. Peter Martyr remedied this defect; but to notice his book does not fall within the scope of these observations. The three first were the best polemical writings of their respective authors. Gardiner was a great man, but his greatness was that of an acute lawyer, an eloquent member of the legislature, and, where religion was not concerned, a patriot. As a controversialist, he is verbose and insulting; nor has he made the best use of materials with which he seems to have been prodigally supplied. The infatuation of the age, however, must be taken into account. Transubstantiation was a doctrine every papist thought himself equal to defend, and grew angry when he found he was not. It was observed, moreover, by the nearest friends both of Gardiner and Boner, that imprisonment had not improved their tempers. Hooper's polemical writing was a surly likeness of himself,-bold, ardent, unhesitating; he published for present effect, not future fame. The temper that made the penitent go unconfessed away, appears in his Answer to Gardiner; the temper that made him an idol to all who knew him intimately, must be sought for in his practical works. He did the task that was providentially allotted him, and no one will say that he did it slackly. The general tone of Cranmer's controversy is calm and dignified, considering the age in which it occurred; his defence of the doctrines he maintained, powerful; and there are passages of admirable structure, such as his commentary on the very plausible extract from Chrysostom, and his arguments on comparative negations. What is more to his credit, his reply to Gardiner is little more severe than his original work, and with the exception of the lie direct, which is mutually and habitually given, and a few hard personalities, where Winchester exposed some temptingly vulnerable place, the title-page is the worst thing about it. "An Answer ..... to a Crafty and Sophistical Cavillation," is not language for one bishop to use towards another, and is part of that constant imputation of motives which spoils the manly bearing of the primate as a controversialist. When Gardiner writes that he never met with any absurd speculations among those devout writers, the schoolmen-the archbishop may be allowed his jest on the depth of his adversary's research in that line of study; but it is more difficult to excuse those passages which charge every villany and mendacity on opponents holding sentiments which he had himself so recently abandoned. When a man's prejudices are assailed, opinions which have grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength, some asperity of reply is always to be expected; hence Gardiner's severe reflections have some excuse; but how could a man who held, in all honesty and integrity, for a long course of years, during which he had collected much matter corroborative of |