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CRANMER

THE RESTorer of pRIMITIVE TRUTH

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is a fact of which we cannot help being reminded in considering the life and character of Thomas Cranmer, who more than any other man influenced and moulded the English Reformation. He was not lacking in courage, as was shown by his frequent opposition to the wishes of his imperious master, King Henry VIII., as well as by his bearing in times of almost universal opposition and reaction; yet on more than one occasion he yielded against his better judgment. He could be heroic and truly venerable in face of an agonising death, even to the degree of drawing tears from hostile bystanders; yet under the influence of cajoling and deceptive kindness, and when there seemed hope of saving his life, he denied his true. opinions. In remembering these inconsistencies,

which have greatly injured his reputation with those who do not agree with his opinions, it is only fair to recollect the circumstances in which he was placed. He was the pioneer of the Reformation on its political as well as on its religious side, and the ground on which he was standing in matters temporal was most uncertain. No human being could altogether oppose the personal tyranny of Henry VIII. and live: the heads of the wisest, best, and noblest of the day flew off at the order of the King without causing him the slightest concern. On the death of Henry the same personal tyranny was exercised by the more ambitious members of the Council, especially the uncles of Edward VI.; and Mary inherited all her father's stubborn and arrogant determination. In ecclesiastical

Pope, to which

matters the supremacy of the the Church had been too long accustomed, passed over to the King, according to the earlier precedents of William the Conqueror and his successors; and the leaders of the Reformation were not at once able to place that personal authority in its true and proper limits. It was not easy to realise that the right of Mary was not the same as the right of Henry ; or if the right of Henry was legitimate, why

the right of Mary was wrong. It was a time of change, transition, perplexity, and incredible difficulty. Under the circumstances it is a matter of marvel that Cranmer was able to achieve what he did, without even greater complications than those in which he was actually involved. It is to his wisdom, moderation, skill, and learning that we owe the appeal of the English Church to Holy Scripture, to the

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Primitive Church, and to a General Council; the fact that, of all the Reformed Churches, the English almost alone did not break the chain of continuity with the past; that English ecclesiastical institutions, instead of being open to the reproach of novelty, were the old, but animated by a new, pure, and Divine spirit ; and that the English formularies, instead of being entirely modern, were studiously and laboriously framed on the best and truest lines of Scripture and antiquity. It is easy to say that in different parts of his writings Cranmer contradicted himself; but that is only an illustration of the fact that his mind did not suddenly emerge, like a butterfly from a chrysalis, full-fledged with a new set of opinions, but

1 It is thought that the same may be said of the Church of Sweden.

gradually cast off one by one the old superstitions of the Middle Ages in which he had been brought up, as he became enlightened by further study and meditation. It was not, for instance, till the last year or two of the reign of Henry that he became convinced that the cherished doctrine of the Real Corporal Presence was neither scriptural nor primitive. If there had been no Cranmer, it is obvious that Gardiner and the papal party would have triumphed in the later years of Henry. If there had been no Cranmer, the Reformation, pent up by delay and restriction, would in all probability have taken the same course under the Council of Edward VI. that it took under the Lords of the Covenant in Scotland. English Christianity, except that which was papal, would have become firmly identified with the influences of Geneva ; and it is improbable that Elizabeth and Parker, without the support of the bias which Cranmer had given to the career of the new learning towards truly Catholic and primitive antiquity, would have been able to stem the tide of fervid innovation, which, with Cranmer's Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. in their hands, they successfully checked and guided into safer and surer channels.

It is worth while to give the outlines of his career up to the death of King Edward VI. The rest is well known.

Thomas Cranmer was born at Aslacton in Nottinghamshire, on July 2nd, 1489, in the reign of Henry VII., three years before the birth of Henry VIII. The facts of his life have been often given; the most succinct account is by Professor Gairdner in the Dictionary of National Biography. His father was a gentleman of old family, which in earlier times had been settled in Lincolnshire. His first schoolmaster was "a rude parish clerk," "marvellous severe and cruel.” In his boyhood he became skilled in shooting, hunting, and hawking, in which, though very short-sighted, he continued to take occasional recreation till far on in life. As Archbishop, he was able to ride the roughest horse in his stables as gracefully and well as any of his household. His mother was Agnes, daughter of Laurence Hatfield, of Willoughby. Losing his father early, he was sent by her, at the age of fourteen, to Cambridge, where, during eight years, he studied the schoolmen, and then took to Erasmus and the classics. He became B.A. in 1511-12, M.A. in 1515, and somewhere about that time Fellow of Jesus. From 1519, as the prelude of the

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