Royal Commission particularly in Essex and in Kent'; and Hooper, foremost in his zeal against them, left a frightful picture of their misbelief. In writing to Bullinger, June 25, 1549, he says: The Anabaptists flock to the place [i. e. of his lecture], and give me much trouble with their opinions respecting the Incarnation of our Lord; for they deny altogether that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary according to the flesh. They contend, that a man who is reconciled to God is without sin, and free from all stain of concupiscence, and that nothing of the old Adam remains in his nature; and a man, they say, who is thus regenerate cannot sin. They add, that all hope of pardon is taken away from those who, after having received the Holy Ghost, fall into sin. They maintain a fatal necessity, and that beyond and besides that will of His, which He has revealed to us in the Scriptures, God hath another will by which He altogether acts under some kind of necessity...How dangerously our England is affected by heresies of this kind, God only knows: I am unable indeed from sorrow of heart, to express to your piety. There are some who deny that man is endued with a soul different from that of a beast, and subject to decay. Alas! not only are these heresies reviving among us which were formerly dead and buried, but new ones are springing up every day. There are such libertines and wretches who are daring enough in their conventicles, not only to deny that Christ is the Messiah and Saviour of the world, but also to call that blessed Seed a mischievous fellow, and deceiver of the world. On the other hand, a great portion of the kingdom so adheres to the popish faction as altogether to set at naught God and the lawful authority of the magistrates; so that I am greatly afraid of a rebellion and civil discord".' While Hooper and some others like him were thus against it, combating the errors which beset them in their daily 1548. 1 Original Letters, ed. P. S. p. 87. 2 Ibid. pp. 65, 66: cf. Hooper's English Articles,' § 6. In the course of the same year (1549) he put forth a special treatise against the Anabaptists, entitled A Lesson of the Incarnation of Christ, 'Later Writings,' ed. P. S. 1852. tion of Arian ministrations, a royal commission (Jan. 18, 1550,) was vigorously at work in aid of their endeavours'. Many of the leading misbelievers were compelled to recant, or in the language of the time, 'to bear their faggots at Paul's cross.' From what has been recorded of proceedings of this nature, we determine the precise complexion of the heresy impugned; and while it must be granted that some persons, like Champneys', did not venture to assail the fundamental articles of the Christian faith, some others, as Assheton for example, openly denied the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of the Saviour. The The introducappalling spread of Arian notions is deplored indeed by ism. a contemporary writer, as among the greatest and most deadly of the manifold calamities then pressing on the Church of England, and perplexing the spirit of her teachers. We have not only (he writes) to contend with the papists, who are almost everywhere ashamed of their errors, but much more with the sectaries, and Epicureans, and pseudo-evangelicals. In addition to the ancient errors respecting pædo-baptism, the Incarnation of Christ, the authority of the magistrate, the [lawfulness of an] oath, the property and community of goods, and the like, new ones are rising up every day, with which we have to contend. The chief opponents, however, of Christ's Divinity are the Arians, who are now beginning to shake 1 Cf. Wilkins, IV. 66. 2 Strype, Cranmer, II. 92, 93. Among the propositions maintained by him were the following: (1) That a man, after he is regenerate in Christ, cannot sin: (2) That the outward man might sin, but the inward man could not: (3) That God doth permit to all His elect people their bodily necessities of all worldly things. 3 Ibid. p. 95. 4 Joan of Kent was burnt May 2, 1550, for maintaining a heresy like that of the early Valentinians. She denied that our Lord took flesh of See the Virgin, from a persuasion that 5 Otherwise nicknamed 'Gospel- 6 The letter is dated London, Aug. 14, 1551. Cf. Zurich Letters, 1. 30, 92. A fresh commission, 1552; probably directed against the Family of Love.' our Churches with greater violence than ever, as they deny the conception of Christ by the Virgin'.' In September, 1552, a further missive, emanating from the royal council urged the primate to repress the evil-doings of another sect 'newly sprung up in Kent2.' The name and character of this sect have not been distinctly placed on record, but we have good reason for concluding that it formed the earliest wave of a disastrous inundation which diffused itself extensively in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Becon3, writing at the period when the sectaries arose, entitles them 'Davidians,' or the followers of David, at the same time classing their wicked and ungodly opinions' with those of the Anabaptists and the Libertines. They subsequently bore the title 'Family of Love,' and under it became a large association of distempered spiritualists, who set at naught the letter of the Holy Scriptures and professed to raise man out of his subjection to all outward, introductory œconomies. In this second stage of their existence, they had found an active leader in Henry Niclas or Nicholas, a native of Amsterdam1; and one of the directions given by him to all who joined his standard indicates the sweeping and annihilative temper of the system he was building up: They must pass four most terrible castles full of cumbersome enemies, before they come to the House 1 Original Letters, ed. P. S. p. 574: cf. p. 560. On the 24th of April, a Dutchman was burned in Smithfield for Arianism:' Stow's Chron. p. 605, Lond. 1632. Among other subjects of inquiry during Hooper's visitation in this same year, he asks 'Whether any of them speak unreverently of God the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost?' Strype, Eccl. Mem. II. 355. 2 Strype, Cranmer, II. 410. 3 Works, ('Catechism, '&c.), p. 415, ed. P. S. The name Davidians is derived from the Dutchman, David George, the real founder of the Family of Love (Hardwick's Reform. p. 291). In a letter written from London, May 20, 1550, it is stated that 'there are Arians, Marcionists, Libertines, Danists, and the like monstrosities, in great numbers.' Original Letters, ed. P. S. p. 560. The editor has added no explanation of the term, Danists, but it seems to be intended for Davists or Davidians. The form Davidista occurs elsewhere in the same sense. The displaying of an horrible secte of grosse and wicked Heretiques, naming themselves the Family of Love, &c., by John Rogers, Lond. 1579, sign. A. iiij. of Love; the first is, of John Calvin, the second the Papists, the third Martin Luther, the fourth the Anabaptists; and passing these dangers they may be of the Family, else not1.' among the But these external causes of anxiety and annoyance Controversies were accompanied by dissension, irritation and misgiving English Rein the bosom of the Church itself. The contest which arose in 1550 between Hooper and Ridley on the subject of ecclesiastical vestments2 was a specimen of the incessant struggle everywhere maintained between adherents of the old and of the new ideas3. Hooper, fresh from Zürich, where he had been fascinated by the Zwinglian usages and also to a great extent infected by Swiss theology, was the avowed opponent of the English Ordinal as well as of the first of the Edwardine Prayer-Books. He conformed, indeed, eventually (in 1551) on his promotion to the see of Gloucester; but throughout the reign of Edward he was ever actively at work in fostering the growth of antiMediæval tastes, and pushing forward an 'entire purification of the Church from the very foundation".' jections to cles, 1550. It is most important to observe, as throwing light Hooper's ob upon the scruples of Hooper and his party, that when three Arti Cranmer, in conjunction with the royal council, first made use of Articles of Religion, in 1549, to test the orthodoxy of preachers and lecturers in divinity, Hooper was unable to acquiesce in three of those Articles (May 1550). The two relating to the Ordinal and Prayer-Book were distasteful to him, as we might have readily predicted from our general knowledge of his character and bias; but 1 Ibid. A. iiij. b. 2 See Strype's chapter (Memorials of Cranmer, Bk. II. ch. xvii.) on this question; and Heylin's Hist. Reform. I. 193, 194, ed. Robertson. There are also frequent notices of it in the Original Letters, ed. P. S. e. g. pp. 9, 91, 271, 486, 586, 672—675. 3 A notable instance occurred in the controversy with regard to kneeling at the Holy Communion (Hard wick's Ref. p. 223, and n. 9). The 4 Ibid. p. 563. Are sacraments the vehicles or means of grace? until the recent publication of letters' where those Articles are mentioned, no one seems to have suspected that Hooper had been also brought into collision with such men as Cranmer, Ridley and Bucer, on the nature and efficacy of the Christian Sacraments. The third obnoxious Article in that early series had made use of the expression 'sacraments confer grace,'-which, having been exposed already to the stern denunciations both of Zwingli and Calvin, had come to be regarded as a party-badge, or war-cry2, alienating Swiss from Saxon theologians. While the schoolmen, anxious above all things to establish the objective character and virtue of the sacraments, insisted strongly on the phrase 'continere gratiam,' Luther and his followers, in the later stages of their teaching, clung to such expressions as 'conferre gratiam,' 'efficacia signa,' and the like; by which they inculcated the great fact that sacraments are used by God as channels of His grace, without forgetting the correlative truth of human susceptibility. So distinct indeed were their conceptions as to the legitimacy of the phrases sacraments confer grace,' 'baptism works or confers regeneration,' that numerous examples have been put on record where the contradiction of those statements is vehemently condemned. In Eng 6 1 lbid. p. 563. This particular letter was from Martin Micronius to Bullinger, and bears date, 'London, May 28, 1550.' The articles (cf. above, p. 73) were proposed to him by the council on his nomination to the see of Gloucester; but we may reasonably identify them with the articles used by Cranmer in the previous December. 2 See, for instance, the Consensus Tigurinus (printed in Niemeyer,) § xvii. Calvin, however, whose appreciation of the sacraments is far deeper than Zwingli's, objected chiefly to the phrase 'sacramenta per se gratiam conferunt:' cf. Instit. Lib. IV. c. 17. 3 Even Möhler (Symb. 1. 294) fully acquits the Lutherans of the charge of heresy on this subject; though he contends that some of the earlier language, both of Luther and Melancthon, was 'most decidedly opposed to the Catholic Church,' in seeming to make the efficacy of the sacraments depend entirely on human dispositions. He refers to such passages as that of Luther, De Capt. Babylon. Eccl. (Tom. II. fol. 272, Opp. Jenæ, 1600), where the phrase efficacia signa gratiæ, as defining sacraments, is only accepted after some qualification (cf. Henry VIII.'s critique in the Assertio Septem Sacra. mentorum, sign. I. 4; ed. 1522). |