BONNER CONSIDERED PROTESTANTS AS UNGENTEMANLY. 267 "lamb's flesh yet, and be like you are glutted with "supping so much blood:" with many similar illiberal and rude expressions. It was in allusion to these and similar letters, that Bonner remarked, on the trial of R. Smith, I know they call me "bloody Bonner."* And it was not possible that he could esteem such Ultra-Protestants otherwise than as ungentlemanly, and inferior persons, and burn them, therefore, with less reluctance. He denied his bloodthirstiness, when another called him a "blood-sucker,"† and sentenced the speaker, a man of no rank, nor reputation, to be burned, without any mark of resentment at his insolence and vulgarity. When that poor ignorant pretender to the possession of exclusive truth, Ralph Allerton, whom Bonner had once saved from the fire, by kindly persuading him to recant, had relapsed into his errors, Bonner indeed seems to have lost his temper at the vulgar fellow's obstinacy-"Thou whore-son, rebel, and pricklouse, thou," he called him; "dost thou find a prophecy in Daniel concerning us." The miserable fellow had gone about the country preaching against Popery yet his vulgarity offended Bonner more than his heresy. "He is a glorious knave-whoreson, prick-louse," said the Bishop. Allerton was probably a tailor and it could not be endured that a recanting, relapsing tailor, should dispute with his * Compare p. 349 and p. 712, vol. vii. + Foxe, vol. vii., p. 746. Foxe, vol. viii., p. 407. 270 INDIVIDUALS ARE NEVER RIGHT AGAINST THE CHURCH. "seen." And the Proto-Martyr of England, in the reign of Mary was burnt, in spite of his declaration that he never could, nor did dissent from the Catholic Church, because he would not partake of the unity of the Church of Rome, purchased by the submission of England.* "Will you come into our Church," said Gardiner, "with the Bishops and the whole "realm, and arise out of error and schism ?" "I "will prove to you," said the Proto-Martyr, "that "all I have taught is true and Catholic." "It shall "not, may not, ought not to be granted to you to prove it," was the answer: "for you are but a private man, and may not be heard against the de"termination of the whole realm": and our language, I must confess, is the same to all those who with this man, appeal as individuals, to their own notions of the Catholic Church, and to their own declaration that the laws of man may not and cannot rule the word of God.† I must acknowledge that both I and my friends are unwilling, with Bonner and Gardiner, to believe that any individual can be right against the Church, the Bishops, the Government, the Parliament, the Sovereign, and the Convocation; all of whom, in this instance, had sanctioned the "unity of the Church," which this one Ultra-Protestant condemned. The "unity of the Church" was the point most insisted upon by Bonner, in his first address to the Clergy and Laity of his Diocese, after their reconciliation to * Foxe, vol. vi., p. 593, new edition. + Foxe, vol. vi., p. 597. BONNER'S ADDress on the UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 271 Rome. This address is loved by me and my friends, as expressing most fully and explicitly our own sentiments on the subject of heresy, schism, and unity. "Whereas this noble realm of England, dividing it"self from the unity of the Catholic Church," it begins, "and from the agreement in religion with "all other Christian realms, &c., &c., therefore we require all to be restored to the unity of the “Church."* In nearly all the articles of Bonner, as I have said, which were drawn up as the indictments against the prisoners who were burnt, the violation of the "unity of the Church," as it was effected by submission to Rome, was one of the principal. This was the crime of Causton and Higbed,† that they had departed from the Catholic faith in which they had been born. They had dared to think for themselves, and to depart, with Cranmer and his coadjutors, from the "unity of the Church." "Do "you believe, as the Catholic Church believes ?" was one question to Pigot, Knight, and Lawrence.‡ "Thou hast not believed, and dost not believe,” said Bonner to Simson and Ardley, "that the faith and religion which both the Church of Rome, Italy, Spain, England, France, Ireland, Scotland, and "all the Churches in Europe do believe and teach; "but thou dost believe them to be false, erroneous, "and naught.' Those are heretics, was alledged * Foxe, vol. vi., p. 709. 272 MR. NEWMAN's ancestor, a MARTYR. against Hall and Wade, who believe not as our Holy Mother Church believes.*" I object to you," said Bonner to Derick and Carver, "that you offend "against the Catholic faith of the Church."+-The very crime, and repressed in the very words which we urge against the Ultra-Protestants, who make the Catholic Church teach that only which they believe. "Ye do refuse," said Bonner to the seven, who were afterwards burned together in one fire, "to be recon"ciled again to the unity of the Church."-" You "have fallen from the Universal Church of Christ," said Brokes, the Papal delegate, in the opening of this bitter harangue to Cranmer at his trial.§"Philip and Mary," he added, "perceiving how this "noble realm of England hath been brought from "the unity of the true and Catholic Church, have "requested the Pope, as its Supreme Head, to judge "thee."-"We never refuse," said one, "to be "reconciled and brought to the true unity of the Ca"tholic Church of Christ; but we do refuse to be re"conciled to the religion now established in Eng"land." When John Newman, an ancestor, I believe, of my illustrious friend at Oxford, but who I think, was more of a Protestant than my friend, defended his refusing to be reconciled to the Church * Foxe, vol. vii., p. 318. Foxe, vol. vii., p. 324. Foxe, vol. vii., p. 716. § Foxe, vol. viii., p. 46. Foxe, vol. viii., p. 50. ¶ Foxe, vol. viii., p. 152. NEWMAN THE MARTYR MORE PROTESTANT THAN HIS SON. 273 of Rome; he professed to have been convinced by the teaching of the preachers for seven years, in the time of King Edward, that their view of the Catholic Church was correct. I cannot learn from my friend's books, whether he agrees most with his martyred ancestor, or with Bishop Bonner. But of this, I am sure, that John Newman, of Maidstone, in the reign of Mary, who was burnt by Bonner, at Tenterden,* was much more of an Ultra-Protestant, than his deseendant John Newman, of Oriel College, Oxford, Vicar of St. Mary's; and, I am sure also, that the opinions of John Newman, who was burnt, on transubstantiation, are further from the doctrines of the Church of Rome, and I must say also, are more intelligible, than the opinions of the Oriel John Newman, on the same subject, lately published: but I hail it as one peculiar sign of the times, that an Oxford teacher, clergyman, and (till he actually becomes a member of the Church of Rome) a Protestant clergyman, should rejoice the hearts of my brethren of Rome; by endeavouring to reconcile the abjuration of the doctrines of transubstantiation, with some other novel, not clearly defined, notion of the same doctrine. The modern John Newman is a more voluminous theologian than his ancestor. The faith of the latter shone bright in the fire of his martyrdom. The faith of the former, as a Protestant, gleams obscurely in the smoke of his writings. The latter appeals to Scripture-the former to the Church * Foxe, vol. vii., p. 335, and vol. viii., p. 243. |