the reader, by gabbling through the homily in such a manner, that those who were inclined to listen, could not follow the hurried and contemptuous delivery. When the new office for the Communion was set forth, the point of confession was left free. Such as desired to make their confession to a priest, were admonished not to censure those who were satisfied by confessing to God, and the latter not to be offended with those who continued in the practice of auricular confession; all being exhorted to keep the rule of charity, follow their own conscience, and not to judge others in things not appointed by Scripture. A Liturgy was prepared, with the same sound judgement which characterized all those measures wherein Cranmer had the lead. It was compiled from the different Romish offices used in this kingdom; whatever was unexceptionable was retained, all that savoured of superstition was discarded; the prayers to the saints were expunged, with all their lying legends; and the people were provided with a Christian ritual in their own tongue. And so judiciously was this done, that while nothing which could offend the feelings of a reasonable Protestant was left, nothing was inserted which should prevent the most conscientious Romanist from joining in the service.

The act which repealed all laws and canons that required the Clergy to live in celibacy, was not less important. Strange as it may appear, nothing in the course of the Reformation gave so much offence to the Papists as the marriage of the Clergy; they looked upon the first race as perjured by it, and considered it always afterward as a desecration of the ministers of the altar. There is no topic to which Sir Thomas More, in his controversial writings, reverts so frequently, or treats with so much asperity. The inconveniences which have resulted are, that children are sometimes, upon the father's death, left destitute, often in distressful circumstances; and that, among the higher clergy, wealth which might more fitly be appropriated to pious purposes, has sometimes been employed in aggrandizing private families. But the Popes themselves have so frequently made this use of their power, that a word has been formed to denote the propensity: and the former is part of a great and increasing evil, for which effectual remedies would soon be devised, if half as much zeal were

exerted in removing the real evils of society, as is mischievously employed in combating imaginary grievances. One generation did not pass away, before it was seen that the Protestant Clergy were not withheld, by their connubial and parental ties, from encountering martyrdom, when conscience required the sacrifice. And in our days, when Protestant missions have first been undertaken upon a great scale, and carried on with perseverance, it has been found that the wives of the Missionaries have contributed their full share to the all but miraculous success which has been obtained in the South Sea islands.

Gardiner and Bonner, refusing their consent to these momentous changes, were deprived of their Sees, (the former, after much tergiversation,) and imprisoned, but no rigour was used toward them; nor did the Protestants, in any instance, abuse their triumph by retaliating upon the Papists, for the persecution which they had endured. But hardly had they, as they deemed, secured their triumph, when an unhappy difference arose among them, concerning things in themselves indifferent. Hooper gave occasion to this dispute: having been obliged to fly the kingdom when the Six Articles were enforced, he brought back with him from Switzerland some Calvinistic prejudices; and when he was now appointed to the Bishopric of Gloucester, refused to wear the episcopal habit at his consecration. He is described as a man "of strong body, sound health, pregnant wit, and invincible patience: spare of diet, sparer of words, and sparest of time: harsh, rough, and unpleasant in behaviour, being grave with rigour, and severe with surliness." "Yet to speak truth, (says Fuller,' the best-natured of historians himself,) all Hooper's ill nature consisted in other men's little acquaintance with him. Such as visited him once, condemned him of over-austerity; who repaired to him twice, only suspected him of the same; who conversed with him constantly, not only acquitted him of all morosity, but commended him for sweetness of manners." Dudley, then Earl of Warwick, afterwards Duke of Northumberland, was Hooper's patron, and wrote to Cranmer, requesting that he would bear with him in such reasonable things as he desired, and not charge him with the oath of canonical obedience, which was burdensome to his con1 B. vii. p. 402.

science; and the King, under this influence, discharged Cranmer from any danger of incurring a Premunire, by dispensing with the forms to which Hooper objected. But Cranmer knew that a mere letter from the King could be no protection against the law. Ridley, who had been appointed to Bonner's vacant See, was chosen to argue with Hooper, and convince him of the unreasonableness of such scruples; but he had taken up the notion, that whatever is not of faith, is sin; and their conference ended only in heating them both, and producing an ill-will of long continuance. Bucer and Peter Martyr, men who were both deservedly held in high estimation here, were applied to; and they, though agreeing with Hooper, in wishing for the disuse of all such conformities with the Romish Church, saw, nevertheless, how desirable it was that nothing should be done unnecessarily to offend the Romanists, and urged him to compliance. They cautioned him also to take heed lest, by unseasonable and bitter sermons, he should prevent the great good which his preaching and teaching would otherwise effect. Instead of deferring to this wholesome advice, he appears to have provoked an order from the Privy Council, commanding him to keep his house; and as, during that restraint, he published his opinions, in a manner which tended to widen the difference, they committed him to Cranmer's custody, either there to be reformed, or further punished, as the case might require. Cranmer's report was, that he could not be brought to conformity, being inclined to prescribe laws, and not to obey them: upon which he was sent to the Fleet prison. Such measures would have provoked a stubborn heart; Hooper's was a sincere and noble one. Weighing the matter dispassionately, he perceived that he was wrong in his opposition; and having signified this, to the joy of the Protestant Church, abroad as well as at home, he was consecrated, and took possession of his diocese, there to discharge his arduous duties with exemplary zeal, and finally to close a holy and virtuous life by martyrdom.

The substitution of a table, in place of an altar, is ascribed to Hooper's influence. As a reason for assenting to it in his diocese, Ridley stated, that as one form was used in some churches, and the other in others, dissensions were thus occasioned among the unlearned; and therefore, wishing a godly unity to be ob

served, and because the form of a table might move the simple from the old superstitious opinions of the Popish Mass, he directed that the Lord's Board should be set up in that form, decently covered, in such place of the quire, or chancel, as the Curates, Churchwardens, and Quest-men, might think best; and all other side-altars or tables to be removed. The people had been taught, by a Church book, called the Festival, which had been set forth in Henry the Seventh's time, and was hardly yet laid aside, that whatever needful and lawful things they might pray for on the day when they heard Mass, God would grant; that idle oaths and sins which they had forgotten to confess, were on that day forgiven them; they should neither lose their sight, nor die suddenly, on that day; and that the time which they employed in that holy service would not be carried to the sum appointed for their lives. It was most desirable that they should be undeceived from such superstition, and from the opinion that a real sacrifice was performed when the Sacrament was administered; and it might be more difficult to effect this, while altars were considered as rendered sacred by the relics which they contained. And yet the reasons against such a change ought to have preponderated. An alteration, which was not essential upon the fundamental principles of the Protestant reform, tended to disgust the adherents of the Romish Church, who certainly were still the great majority of the people: it was more needful to conciliate them, than the zealots of the Reformation; and it was more practicable also, for concessions in such cases never fail to call forth farther demands. They who abhorred the altar, were likely soon to treat the table with irreverence.

There was also the farther evil, that fresh opportunity was given for sacrilegious pillage. "Private men's halls were now hung with altar-cloths; their tables and beds covered with copes, instead of carpets and coverlets." "It was a sorry house which had not somewhat of this furniture, though it were only a fair large cushion covered with such spoils, to adorn their windows, or make their chairs have something in them of a chair of state." Chalices were used for carousing cups at the tables of the bolder plunderers, and horses were watered in the stone and marble coffins of the dead; for never before, in any Christian

country, had such demolition of churches been made. Three episcopal houses, two churches, a chapel, a cloister, and a charnel-house, were pulled down by Somerset, to clear the site for his palace, and supply materials for it. When the graves were opened, in this and other like works of sacrilegious indecency, many caskets full of indulgences were found, which had been laid in the coffins with the dead. The bones were carried away by cart-loads, and buried in Bloomsbury. The good feelings of the country were shocked at such sights; and when he would in like manner have pulled down St. Margaret's Church, the parishioners rose and drove away the workmen.

Somerset, if he had lived in happier times, was a man who might have left an unreproached and honourable name; his manners were affable, his disposition frank and generous. But his memory is deeply stained with the guilt of this execrable spoliation, in which no man partook more largely. He contributed, under cover of the Reformation, to bring into England the abuse of bestowing Church preferment upon laymen; a scandal from which, greatly as it prevailed abroad, this country had been remarkably free. We had had no secular Abbots, who were complained of, in Spain, as the fretting worms of the Monastic orders; but Somerset, even before his nephew succeeded to the throne, had secured to himself a Deanery, the treasurership of a Cathedral, and four of its best Prebends; and charged a Bishopric with the payment of 3007. a-year to his son. Much of the remaining property of the Church was in like manner bestowed upon laymen, to the grievous discouragement of learning. Men, who were not authorized by his orders, were encouraged by his example, to appropriate the spoil of Chapels and Churches, which, if not willingly surrendered to them by the poor Churchwardens, they extorted by threats, or took away by violence. Cranmer procured a letter from the Council, to stop this evil; but such prohibitions were of little avail, when the person of most authority in the Council was known to take for himself all that he could obtain. Nothing for which purchasers could be found escaped the rapacity of these plunderers. Tombs were stripped of their monumental brasses; churches of their lead. Bells, to be cast into cannon, were exported in such quantities, Strype's Memorials, ii. p. 293. Bagster's ed. 2 Strype's Cranmer, p. 165.