coming to confession and mass; some for not observing the Church fasts. Of these, many through the fear of death did penance and were dismissed. But such as refused to abjure, or after abjuration relapsed, were burnt at the stake. Many fled into foreign lands. Among these was Tyndal, who, with others, took refuge at Antwerp. These men employed the pen and the press in exposing the corruptions of Rome. They wrote against images, relics, and pilgrimages. They insisted on justification by faith alone, in opposition to justification by priestly absolutions, penances, fasts, flagellations, donations to churches, and other works to merit the divine favor. Their books came to England, and made converts everywhere. But the mightiest engine of the Reformers was Tyndal's translation of the New Testament, printed at Antwerp, A. D. 1527.

Against this translation the king and bishops were incensed to the utmost. While others are spending their rage in deeds of violence, Tonstal, bishop of London, must needs try his hand at a stroke of policy. He gives secret orders to buy up all the copies that can be found at Antwerp; and collecting a vast number, burns them publicly at Cheapside. A fine device, truly, to stop the press by buying up its productions! The first edition was marred with many inaccuracies, which Tyndal longed to correct; but he was too poor to throw aside the first edition and print another. What better service could the bishop of London perform, than to buy up the whole and burn them; and thus furnish the Reformer with funds to print more and better?

The burning of the Bibles shocked the minds of the common people. They could not understand the righteousness of burning the Word of God. The Reformation spread the more rapidly; the prisons became more crowded; the fires burnt with greater frequency.

The whole Bible was translated by Tyndal, assisted by Miles Coverdale and by John Rogers, the first martyr of Queen Mary's reign. This was printed at Hamburg in 1532; and greatly helped to press forward the swelling tide of the Reformation. At length, so great was the progress of popular sentiment, and such the genial influence of Cranmer upon the bigoted king, that the Convocation debated the question of translating the Bible, and allowing it to be read in the vulgar tongue. The majority of the clergy were opposed to it; and their arguments, says Hume, would probably have prevailed in the Convocation, had it not been for the authority of Cranmer, Latimer, and some other bishops, who were supposed to speak the king's sense of the matter.

Tyndal, the Translator, had now been put to death as a heretic

for his agency in that work. His Bible had been proscribed, and men burned for reading it.. But Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, now took the translation of Tyndal, and revising it, leaving out the prologue and notes, and adding a preface of his own, set it forth as a true translation of the Word of God.

In A.D. 1538, the work was printed at Paris. The king would only allow copies of it to be deposited in some parish churches, where they were fastened by chains. And he took care to inform the people by proclamation, "That his indulgence was not the effect of his duty, but of his goodness and his liberality to them, who should therefore use it moderately, for the increase of virtue, not of strife. And he ordered that no man should read the Bible aloud, so as to disturb the priest while he sang mass; nor presume to expound doubtful places without help from the learned." -[Hume.]

But with the Bible, even though it were chained in the churches, if it were allowed to be read by the people at all, how could the doctrines of Popery maintain their ground? From this moment, the light which had gleamed so faintly, began to increase to the dawn of morning. Soon the system of Popery and the doctrines of the Reformation began to conflict in the pulpits. Could men be saved by the use of holy water, ghostly absolution, extreme unction, and the Eucharist; or must holy principles, deep repentance, a living faith, renew and transform the soul? Is salvation of works and priestly offices; or is it of grace, and by faith alone? Is Christianity a religion of forms and incantations, or is it a religion of the heart? So opposite were the two schemes, and so earnest the conflict, that the king forbade all preaching, till himself, as head of the Church, could set forth the scheme of doctrine in which all should be required to agree.

The king himself drew up the articles, to which both houses of Convocation gave their assent as a matter of course. In this system of doctrine, Popery and the Reformation were made to mingle their discordant elements, and alternately shared the several articles of faith. First, the Scripture, with three ancient creeds, the Apostles', the Nicene, and the Athanasian, were made the standard of belief without the traditions or decrees of the Pope.

Justification by Faith, not for any merit or work done by us, but for the merits of the blood and passion of the Lord Jesus Christ alone;-in the next breath, auricular confession and penance, are enjoined as essential to salvation.

Marriage, extreme unction, confirmation, and orders, were no longer mentioned as sacraments; on the other hand, the people were required to believe "that in the sacrament of the altar, un

der the form of bread, there was truly and substantially present the same body of Christ that was born of the Virgin." "The Catholics prevailed," says Hume, "in asserting the use of images; the Protestants in warning the people against idolatry." People were still taught to pray to the saints. The prescribed ceremonies of worship were to be regarded as not only good and lawful, but as possessing a mystic signification and power. Such was the use of priestly vestments, holy water, "bearing candles on Candlemas day; giving ashes on Ash Wednesday; bearing palms on Palm Sunday; creeping to the cross on Good Friday; hallowing the fount, and other exercises and benedictions."

The article on Purgatory, says Hume, " contains the most curious jargon, ambiguity, and hesitation, arising from the mixtures of the two tenets: the people were to believe it good and charitable to pray for the souls of the departed; but since the place they were in, and the pain they suffered, were uncertain by Scripture, people ought to remit them to God's mercy. Therefore all abuses of the doctrine ought to be put away, and the people disengaged from believing that Popish masses, or prayers, said in certain places and before certain images, could deliver souls out of purgatory."

In the meantime the Pope was endeavoring to spirit up the people and clergy to rebellion; but not succeeding in this, he fulminated his sentence of excommunication against the whole kingdom; declared the king destitute of any title to the crown; forbade his subjects to obey him, and all princes to correspond with him. The clergy were commanded to depart from the kingdom, and the nobility to rise in arms against the king. For all this the king took ample vengeance on the adherents of the Pope, and pushed on the Reformation with great vigor. He enjoined it upon the clergy to publish twice a quarter that the Pope's power was usurped, and without authority of Scripture; to exhort the people to teach their children the Lord's prayer, the Creed, and the Commandments, in English; and ordered that every incumbent should explain these, one article a day, till the people were instructed in them. Thus the very things, for which so many of the followers of Wickliffe and Luther had been burnt, were now enjoined by authority of the king.

A book was now put forth by the command of the king, entitled "THE INSTITUTION OF A CHRISTIAN MAN," but more commonly called THE BISHOPS' BOOK, having been composed by Cranmer, the bishops of London, Winchester, Chichester, Norwich, Ely, Latimer, bishop of Worcester, and the bishops of Salisbury, Hereford, St. Davids, and some other divines. This book contained an explanation of the Lord's prayer, the Creed, the Sacraments,

the commandments, the Ave Maria, the doctrines of justification and purgatory, according to the theology of the times.

One thing is worthy of notice, as showing that the modern notion of the Divine right of Bishops, as an order superior to Presbyters, was not then even dreamed of by the heads of the • Church of England. This book, "The Institution of a Christian man," declares that "In the New Testament there is no mention made of any degrees or orders but only of Deacons (or ministers) and of PRIESTS (or Bishops);" thus renouncing all claim of Divine authority for more than two orders of clergy. This book was subscribed by the two archbishops, by nineteen bishops, by the lower house of Convocation; and was put forth with the whole authority of the Church and the king, its acknowledged head.

The careful manner in which the opinions of this book were drawn up, is worthy of notice. A committee of the highest dignitaries of the Church, and of the most learned divines in the kingdom was previously called to sit and deliberate upon matters of religion. The topics which they were to examine were divided into heads and proposed in questions. These were given out to the bishops and divines, and at a set time every one brought in his opinion in writing on all the heads. Then all conferred on points of difference until they were able to agree on something to lay before the Convocation. One of these conferences was held in 1537, or 1538; and one of the papers drawn up was entitled "A Declaration of the functions and Divine institution of Bishops and Priests." This paper, signed by Cranmer and a large number of bishops and priests, contains the following passage: "In the New Testament, there is no mention made of any degrees or distinction in orders, but only of Deacons (or ministers) and Priests (or bishops);" thus deliberately denying the existence of more than two orders of permanent Church officers in the New Testament; and making bishops and presbyters identical. Again in 1540, a commission sitting with Cranmer at their head, declared, says Bishop Burnet, "That the Scripture makes express mention of only two orders, Priests and Deacons."

Three years after this, another book was published, entitled "THE NECESSARY ERUDITION OF A CHRISTIAN MAN;" corrected by the king's hand, and approved by the parliament as the authoritative faith of the nation. This book likewise asserts that Bishops and Priests are of the same order, and limits the number of scriptural Church officers to two orders, Bishops (or Priests) and Deacons.

Here, perhaps, I ought to notice a singular statement made in a recent work on Episcopacy, entitled "A view of the or

ganization and order of the Primitive Church;"* a work widely and earnestly circulated and extolled by the advocates of Episcopacy in this quarter. This book also quotes these passages concerning the two orders, from the "Institution" and from the "Erudition of a Christian man ;" but maintains that Cranmer and his coadjutor were not Reformers when they penned these documents; and that to quote them as evidence of what the Reformers thought, "is gross misrepresentation." Indeed, the author of this work earnestly argues that when Cranmer and his coadjutors were Reformers, in the days of King Edward, they were of another opinion, and maintained the Divine right of Bishops as above Presbyters. The statements in the "Institution" and the "Erudition," he says, "were the opinions of these men as Romanists, and not as Reformers; and the man who quotes them as such, is either too IGNORANT to write, or too DISHONEST to be trusted."t

It so happens that the learned and celebrated Stillingfleet, more than a century ago, had occasion to refer to the opinions of the Reformers upon these points; and not only maintained, but proved, by a reference to original manuscript documents,the best of all possible evidence, that the views of the Reformers were precisely these, and that too at the brightest point of the Reformation.

Says Stillingfleet, "I doubt not to make it evident, that before these late unhappy times, the main grounds for settling Episcopal government in the nation, WAS NOT ACCOUNTED ANY PRETENCE OF DIVINE RIGHT, but the CONVENIENCY of that form of government to the state of this Church at the time of its Reformation." And here he says, "I meddle not with the times of Henry VIII., when I will not deny but the first quickening of the Reformation might be; I date the birth of it from the first settlement of that most excellent prince Edward VI." Then passing by the times of Henry VIII., into the times of the undoubted Reformation, he points out the steps by which the lower house of the Convocation. obtained liberty of proceeding in the work of Reformation: for otherwise the law forbade them to agitate the question. He gives the petitions at length. He relates how a select assembly of bishops and divines were gathered at Windsor Castle, by King Edward's special order, to digest matters preparatory to a thorough Reformation. Here were Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York, the Bishops of Rochester, London, Carlisle, and others of the most distinguished of the reform

By A. B. Chapin.

†These passages had been so quoted by Dr. Dwight in his Theology, and by Dr. Hawes, in his "Tribute to the memory of the Pilgrims;" I know not to whom else these savory epithets may be considered as having a designed and special reference.