Light from Old Times Or Protestant Facts And
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LIGHT FROM OLD TIMES; OR, Protestant Facts And Men. WITH AN INTRODUCTION FOR OUR OWN DAYS. BY JOHN CHARLES RYLE, D.D., LORD BISHOP OF LIVERPOOL; Author of “Expository Thoughts on the Gospels,” etc. “If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?”—1 Cor. xiv. 8. SECOND EDITION. LONDON 1898 As Published by Grace-eBooks.com 2015 LIGHT FROM OLD TIMES; OR, Protestant Facts And Men. BY JOHN CHARLES RYLE, D.D., LORD BISHOP OF LIVERPOOL; SECOND EDITION. LONDON 1898 As Published by Grace-eBooks.com 2015 INTRODUCTION THE volume now in the reader’s hands requires a few words of prefatory explanation. It is partly historical, and partly biographical. It is about facts and men. Under the historical head the reader will find some account of the three most remarkable events in the history of the Reformed Church of England. The first of these events is the ferocious attempt which was made by Queen Mary, of unhappy memory, to destroy the work of religious Reformation which was begun in the reign of Edward the Sixth. - The second event is the blind and abortive effort of Archbishop Laud to unprotestantize the Church of England, which resulted in his own execution, and well-nigh ruined the Church and the monarchy for ever. - The third event is the daring attack on English Protestantism, which was made by James the Second, when he prosecuted the Seven Bishops, and, under the specious name of toleration, endeavoured to re-establish the power of the Bishop of Rome in the land. These three events ought to be familiar to every Englishman. In the second, tenth, and last papers in this volume I have tried to supply some condensed information about them. We live in an age when they cannot be known too well, and ought to be continually kept before the public eye. Under the biographical head the reader will find in this volume some account of the lives and opinions of eleven remarkable men. At the head of the eleven I have placed John Wycliffe, the morning- star of the Reformation. He lived before the invention of printing, and consequently is far less known than he ought to be, and I believe that English Christianity owes him a great debt which has never been fully paid. Among the eleven I have placed Archbishop Laud. He is a man who did such indelible harm to the Church of England, and yet is so generally overvalued and misunderstood, that I have felt it a plain duty to place him before my readers in his true colours. I believe the wounds he inflicted on our Church will never be healed. Of the remaining nine, six were Reformers, who were burned alive in Queen Mary’s days, because they would not abjure their Protestant principles, and believe in the sacrifice of the Mass. Three of the nine were Puritan divines, who lived in the 17th century, and made a deep mark in their day and generation. One common remark applies both to Reformers and Puritans. They are far less known and understood in these latter times than they ought to be. Of course I have chosen the six Reformers as subjects of biographies, deliberately, purposely, and with special reasons. What those reasons are I will proceed to explain. (1) I hold, then, first of all, that the lives, deaths, and opinions of the leading English Reformers demand special investigation in the present day. The Church of England, as it now is, was in great measure the work of their hands. To them, with a few trifling exceptions, we owe our present Articles, Liturgy, and Homilies. That great ecclesiastical machinery, whose centre is at Lambeth Palace and whose influence is more or less felt throughout the world wherever the British flag waves, was purified, remoulded, and recast in its present form by their instrumentality. Can any one doubt that it is of the utmost importance to ascertain what they thought and did, and in defence of what opinions they lived and died? - Surely common sense points out that if we want to know who is a true “Churchman,” we should find out what manner of men the first Churchmen were! The natural way to ascertain what views of religion are “Church views,” is to inquire what kind of views were held by our Church Reformers in the sixteenth century. In matters of doctrine are we of one mind with Cranmer, Ridley, Hooper, and Latimer? If not, our “Churchmanship” is of a somewhat peculiar and equivocal kind. Holding these opinions, I have endeavoured to produce a correct sketch of six of the leading champions of the English Reformation. Those whom I have chosen, undoubtedly, with the exception of Ridley, were not equal to Cranmer in point of learning. In popular talent, however, and general influence with their countrymen, they were probably second to none. I venture the conjecture that the middle classes and lower orders of Englishmen in the sixteenth century were more familiar with the names of two of them, viz,, Bishop Hooper and Bishop Latimer, than of any of the Reformers. None, I suspect, made such a deep impression on the minds of their generation, none were so often talked of round English firesides, as the two whose lives are fully given in this volume. None, I am firmly persuaded, so thoroughly deserve to be had in honour. They were men of whom the Church of England may well be proud. She may reckon among her sons some perhaps who were their equals; but none, I am sure, who were their superiors. For abounding usefulness in life and noble courage in death, Hooper and Latimer have never been surpassed. Certain modern Churchmen, I am well aware, have tried hard to depreciate the value of the English Reformation, and to vilify the character of the English Reformers. One writer in particular, who occupied no mean position among the champions of the extreme Ritualistic or Catholic School, did not scruple to put in print the following extraordinary sentences: - “Robespierre, Danton, Marat, St. Just, Couthon, and the like, merit quite as much admiration and respect as Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, and the others, who happened to have the ill luck to be worsted in a struggle wherein they meant to serve their adversaries as they were served themselves.” “It has been brought as a serious charge against men of my school, that we should have been safe under Queen Mary. But we should have been burnt for refusing a new and immoral creed, if that young tiger-cub Edward VI had lived, and Cranmer had not been arrested in his wicked career by Divine vengeance. Of the depth of infamy into which this wretched man descended, as the unscrupulous tool of the tyrant Henry and his minion, Thomas Cromwell, I have no leisure to speak now.” “If history were honestly written, Latimer would change places with Bonner, and appear in true colours as the coarse, profane, unscrupulous, persecuting bully which the other prelate is usually called, and with the special brand of cowardice besides, of which no man can accuse Bonner.” “Latimer was a coward.” “Latimer was perjured and unscrupulous.” “Latimer’s coarseness and profanity are not left to conjecture, nor to the bias of partisans. He has given ample proof of them under his own hand in his still extant sermons.” - (See “Innovations: “a Lecture by Dr. Littledale, priest of the Church of England. Delivered at Liverpool, April 23, 1868. Pages 15, 16, 17, 44, 45.) Violent language like this injures nobody but the man who uses it. It utterly defeats its own object. It proves far too much, if it proves anything at all. How any set of men so bad as the Reformers are painted by the writer I have just quoted, could have obtained the influence they undoubtedly obtained, and swayed public opinion as they undoubtedly swayed it, is “a little difficulty” which he did not think fit to explain. If our ancestors allowed the Reformation to be carried on by men of such wretched characters as he attributes to the English Reformers, the Englishmen of that day must have been idiots and fools. It is clear as daylight to my mind, even if there were no historical evidence on the subject, that the generation which really knew Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, and Hooper, thought far more highly of them than Dr. Littledale did. If they had been the bad, worthless men that he represents them, they would never have left such a deep mark on the religious character of England as they certainly did. But, after all, what historical proof did Dr. Littledale give that his low estimate of the English Reformers is correct? I answer unhesitatingly, “None that will satisfy any impartial judge of evidence.” The testimony of a contemporary historian, the well- known John Fox, the Martyrologist, stands in the way; and how did he get over it? He simply abused him, or in plain English called him a liar. He said that he was “a mendacious partisan.” He styled the “Acts and Monuments of Fox” “a magazine of lying bigotry: a book which no educated man now living, possessed of any self-respect or honesty, does otherwise than repudiate with contempt and aversion.” (See Lecture on “Innovations,” already quoted.) Attacks on Fox such as these are very ancient things. From the day that the good old “Book of Martyrs” first appeared, it has been assailed and abused more violently by the advocates of Popery than any uninspired book that ever was printed.