Part 21
One remarkable circumstance in this matter ought not to be omitted, viz. that the king’s agent at Rome sent him word, “that the Pope’s advice was, that if the king’s conscience were satisfied, he should presently marry another wife, and then prosecute the suit; and that this was the only way for the king to attain his desires;”[107] but the king refused to do it. And when Cardinal Wolsey sent a message to the king to the same purpose, the king replied, “if the bull be naught, let it be so declared; and if it be good, it shall never be broken by any by-ways for me.” And when he objected the tediousness of the suit, he answered, “since he had patience eighteen years, he would stay yet four or five more, since the opinion of all the clerks of his kingdom (besides two) were lately declared for him;” adding, “that he had studied the matter himself, and writers of it, and that he found it was unlawful _de jure divino_, and undispensible.”
Thus we have found the king himself declaring, in public and private, his real dissatisfaction in point of conscience; and that it was no inordinate affection to Ann Bolleyn which put him upon it; and the same attested by Sir Thomas More, and the circumstances of affairs. I now proceed to another witness.
The next is Bishop Bonner himself, in his preface to Gardiner’s book of “True Obedience;” for thus he begins: “Forasmuch as there be some doubtless now at this present, which think the controversy between the king’s royal majesty and the bishop of Rome, consisteth in this point, for that his majesty hath taken the most excellent and most noble lady Ann to his wife; whereas in very deed, notwithstanding the matter is far otherwise, and nothing so.” So that, if Bishop Bonner may be believed, there was no such immediate cause of the schism, as the love to Ann Bolleyn. And withal he adds, “that this book was published, that the world might understand what was the whole voice and resolute determination of the best and greatest learned bishops, with all the nobles and commons of England, not only in the cause of matrimony, but also in defending the gospel’s doctrine, _i.e._ against the Pope’s usurped authority over the church.” Again he saith, “that the king’s marriage was made by the ripe judgment, authority, and privilege, of the most and principal universities of the world; and then with the consent of the whole church of England; and that the false pretended supremacy of the bishop of Rome was most justly abrogated: and that if there were no other cause but this marriage, the bishop of Rome would content himself, _i.e._ if he might enjoy his power and revenues still, which,” he saith, “were so insupportable, that there lay the true cause of the breach: For his revenues here were near as great as the king’s; and his tyranny was cruel and bitter, which he had exercised here under the title of the Catholic church, and the authority of the apostles Peter and Paul, when notwithstanding he was a very ravening wolf, dressed in sheep’s cloathing, calling himself the servant of servants.” These are Bonner’s words, as I have transcribed them out of two several translations, whereof one was published while he was bishop of London.
Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, in his book, not only affirms the king’s former marriage to be unlawful, and the second to be just and lawful, but that he had the consent of the nation, and the judgment of his church, as well as foreign learned men for it; and afterwards he strenuously argues against the Pope’s authority here, as a mere usurpation. And the whole clergy not only then owned the king’s supremacy, (Fisher excepted,) but in the book published by authority, called “A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of a Christian Man,” &c., the Pope’s authority was rejected as an usurpation, and confuted by Scripture and antiquity. King James I. declares, “that there was a general and catholic conclusion of the whole church of England in this case;” and when some persons suspected, that it all came from the king’s marriage, Bishop Bonner, we see, undertakes to assure the world it was no such thing.[108]
The separation was made, then, by a general consent of the nation; the king, and church, and people all concurring: and the reasons inducing them to cast off the Pope’s usurpation were published to the world at that time; and those reasons have no relation at all to the king’s marriage: and if they are good, as they thought they were, and this gentleman saith not a word to disprove them, then the foundation of the disunion between the church of Rome and us, was not laid in the king’s inordinate passion, but on just and sufficient reasons.
Thus it appears, that this gentleman hath by no means proved two parts of his assertion, viz. “That our Reformation was erected on the foundations of lust and usurpation.”
But our grim logician proceeds from immediate and original, to concomitant causes; which, he saith, “were revenge, ambition, and covetousness.”[109] But the skill of logicians used to lie in proving; but this is not our author’s talent, for not a word is produced to that purpose. If bold sayings, and confident declarations, will do the business, he is never unprovided; but if you expect any reason from him, he begs your pardon; he finds how ill the character of a grim logician suits with his inclination. However, he takes a leap from causes to effects; and here he tells us, “the immediate effects of this schism, were sacrilege, and a bloody persecution, of such as denied the king’s supremacy in matters wholly spiritual, which no layman, no king of Israel ever exercised.”[110]
What the supremacy was, is best understood by the book published by the king’s order, and drawn up by the bishops of that time. By which it appears, that the main thing insisted on was, rejecting the Pope’s authority; and as to the positive part, it lies in these things: 1. In defending and protecting the church. 2. In overseeing the bishops and priests in the execution of their office. 3. In reforming the church to the old limits and pristine estate of that power which was given to them by Christ, and used in the primitive church. “For it is out of doubt,” saith that book, “that Christ’s faith was then most pure and firm, and the Scriptures of God were then best understood, and virtue did then most abound and excel; and therefore it must needs follow, that the customs and ordinances then used and made, be more conform and agreeable unto the true doctrine of Christ, and more conducing unto the edifying and benefit of the church of Christ, than any custom or laws used or made by the bishop of Rome, or any other addicted to that see and usurped power since that time.”
This book was published with the king’s declaration before it; and therefore we have reason to look on the supremacy to be taken as it is there explained. And what is there now “so wholly spiritual, that no layman, or king of Israel, ever exercised in this supremacy?” But this writer never took the pains to search into these things, and therefore talks so at random about them.
As to the persecutions that followed, it is well known that both sides blame King Henry the Eighth for his severity; and therefore this cannot be laid to the charge of his separation. For the other effect of sacrilege, I do not see how this follows from the Reformation; for although some uses might cease by the doctrines of it, as monks to pray the dead out of purgatory; yet there were others to have employed the church lands about, as some of them were in founding new bishoprics, &c. And I have nothing to say in justification of any abuses committed that way; only that the king and parliament could not discern the difference between greater and lesser, as to the point of sacrilege; and since the Pope had shewed them the way, by granting bulls for the dissolution of the lesser monasteries, they thought, since the Pope’s power was taken away, they might, with as little sacrilege, dissolve the rest. I will shut up this with the words of archbishop Laud: “But if there have been any wilful and gross errors, not so much in opinion as fact, (sacrilege too often pretending to reform superstition,) that’s the crime of the reformers, not of the Reformation, and they are long since gone to God to answer it, to whom I leave them.”[111]
The method I proposed for satisfaction of conscience about the Reformation, was to consider, whether there were not sufficient cause for it? Whether there were not sufficient authority? And, whether the proceedings of our Reformation were not justifiable by the rules of scripture, and the ancient church? He tells me, “he may safely join issue with me upon all three points, and conclude in the negative.” But upon second thoughts, he finds he may much more safely let it alone: and very fairly would have me take it for granted, “That the church of Rome cannot err in matters of faith;” (for that he must mean by the church there,) “and that our church hath no authority of reforming herself; and that our proceedings were not justifiable, according to the right interpretation of scriptures by the fathers and councils.” But if I will not allow his affirmations for proofs, for his part he will act the grim logician no longer; and in truth, it becomes him so ill, that he doth well to give it over. When he will undertake to prove, that the church of Rome is the one Catholic and infallible church of Christ, and answer what I have produced in the former discourses, I will ease him of any farther trouble; for then I will grant that our Reformation cannot be justified. But till then, I shall think it no want of humility to conclude the victory to be on our side. And I would desire him not to end with such a bare-faced assertion of a thing so well known to be false, viz. “That there is not one original treatise written by a Protestant, which hath handled distinctly, and by itself, that Christian virtue of humility.” Since within a few years, (besides what hath been printed formerly,) such a book hath been published in London. But he doth well to bring it off with, “at least that I have seen or heard of;” for such books have not lain much in the way of his enquiries. Suppose we had not such particular books, we think the Holy Scripture gives the best rules and examples of humility of any book in the world; but I am afraid he should look on his case as desperate, if I send him to the scripture, since he saith, “Our divines do that, as physicians do with their patients whom they think incurable, send them at last to Tunbridge-waters, or to the air of Montpellier.”
FOOTNOTES:
[49] “Copies of Two Papers written by the late King Charles II., together with a Copy of a Paper written by the late Duchess of York. Published by his Majesty’s command. London, 1686.”
[50] His pamphlet is entitled, “An Answer to some Papers lately printed, concerning the authority of the Catholic Church in matters of Faith, and the Reformation of the Church of England. London, 1686.”—Stillingfleet withheld his name.
[51] “I refer myself to the judgment of those who have read the answer to the defence of the late king’s papers, and that of the duchess, _in which last_ I was concerned, how charitably I have been represented there.”—_Preface to the Hind and Panther_, Vol. X. p. 113, 114.
[52] See Vol. X. p. 203-208, and the notes there referred to.
[53] Morley, bishop of Winchester, who, as presently will be noticed, was chaplain in the family of Sir Edward Hyde during the usurpation, tells us, “that the duchess, (then Miss Hyde,) as she was the eldest, so was she the forwardest, and most capable to receive instruction; for God having given her an extraordinary good understanding for one of her sex and years, so he had given her an extraordinary good inclination to the exercises of piety and devotion; so that, when she was not, as I remember, above twelve years of age, I did think her every way fit to be admitted to the receiving the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, which she did then, and always afterwards, with very great devotion, so long as she and I staid together in her father’s house at Antwerp.”—_Preface to Bishop Morley’s Treatise_, p. vi.
[54] Morley says, that he continued to be the duchess’s spiritual director “until after her father’s banishment; and all that time I must bear her witness, that she was not only a zealous Protestant herself, according as it is by law established in the church of England, but zealous to make proselytes.”—_Preface as above_, p. xii.
[55] Dr Peter Heylin was born at Burford, in Oxfordshire, in 1600, and rose high in the church, being one of the chaplains in ordinary to Charles I. During the great civil war, he was reduced to distress, but survived the Restoration, and died in 1662. In 1661, he published his history of the Reformation, under the title of “_Ecclesia Restaurata_.”
[56] These were Sheldon and Morley. Sheldon was bishop of London, and was promoted to the see of Canterbury on the death of the venerable Juxon. Burnet describes him as generous and charitable, and extremely dexterous in politics; but adds, that he only spoke of religion as an engine of government, and _thus_ gained with the king the character of a wise and honest clergyman. He was much blamed by the Low Church divines, for the rigour with which he followed up the parliamentary deprivation, by which two thousand divines, as was alleged, were ejected for non-conformity.
Blandford, successively bishop of Oxford and Worcester, was an able and excellent divine, modest and humble, says Burnet, even to a fault. Morley, bishop of Winchester, had recommended him to the duchess to be her spiritual director in his stead, when he himself retired from court in 1667: “And I made choice of him,” says that prelate, “not only because, in regard of his learning, piety, gravity, and modesty, together with the gentleness and sweetness of his address and conversation, he was at least as fit as any I could think of for that employment, but in regard of his former relation of chaplain to her father, to whom he owed his rise in the church.”—_Preface to Bishop Morley’s Treatise_, p. xiv.
[57] Stillingfleet, being at this time dean of St Paul’s, stood in the van of the controversy with the Papists. He had learning, penetration, some power of language, without much nicety of expression, and, above all, that intrepidity and undaunted resolution which the times required. After the Revolution, he reaped the harvest of his labours in the bishopric of Worcester. This eminent divine was born in 1635, and died in 1699. The tract which follows, is the third part of his Answer to the Papers published by James, respecting the conversion of his brother and wife to the Roman Catholic faith.
[58] This prelate was Dr George Morley, who, during the time of the usurpation, was domestic chaplain to Sir Edward Hyde, afterwards Lord Clarendon; and educated his daughter, Anne Hyde, in the faith of the church of England. See page 189. Upon the Restoration, Morley was made successively bishop of Worcester and Winchester. “He was,” says Burnet, “a pious, charitable man, of an exemplary life, but extremely passionate and obstinate.” This prelate, who was deeply and justly afflicted with the Duchess’s change of religion, vindicated himself from the suspicion of having neglected his duty towards her, by publishing, in 1683, a collection of tracts, with an apologetical preface already quoted, and a letter which he had written to the Duchess in 1670-1, some months before her death, upon hearing a rumour that she was shaken in her adherence to the Protestant faith.
[59] Preface to his Treatise, p. 5.
[60] Letter to her Royal Highness, p. 3, 4.
[61] “And this I am the rather obliged to believe, because, the last time I had any discourse with your Highness of things of this nature, you did seriously affirm to me, that never any priest of the church of Rome had ever been so bold as to enter into any discourse of religion with you. Whereupon, when I humbly besought your Highness, that if any of them should be so bold at any time afterwards, and you should think fit to hear what they could say, either for their own church, or against ours; your Highness would be pleased to command them to give it you in writing, and that you would be pleased to show me, or my lord of Oxford, any such papers, or paper, they should give you to consider of, and to reply to: the which, because you were pleased to promise me you would do, and have never as yet done, (not to me I am sure, nor to him either for aught I know,) I cannot believe that any thing of that kind hath been as yet said to you, at least, not so as to make any impression on you, and much less to gain an absolute belief from you, that there is no salvation to be had but in the church of Rome only, and consequently, that if ever you mean to be saved, you must of necessity quit our communion, and embrace theirs.”—_Letter to the Duchess_.
[62] Sheldon, and Blandford. The former, as already mentioned, was bishop of London, and afterwards archbishop of Canterbury; the latter bishop of Oxford, afterwards of Worcester.
[63] Blandford.
[64] The bishop of Winchester had only heard of this paper from Maimbourg’s publication, “wherein,” says Morley, “he reciteth something, which he saith was written by the late Duchess of York, to justify her leaving the communion of the church of England, to embrace that of Rome. But why should I say any more, or indeed so much as I have said of a _non-ens_, or of what I believe never was in _rerum naturâ_; I mean such a discourse, as is pretended to have been betwixt the Dutchess of York, and two of the most learned bishops of England; I know no proof we have, that there was ever any such thing, at least in print, or publicly known, and avowed, but this attestation of Maimbourg the Jesuit, who I am sure was neither eye nor ear witness of it, but must have it by hearsay only, from others, who had it from others, that might be the devisers of it.”
[65] Heylin’s extreme animosity against the Puritans, hurries him into the opposite extreme of favouring the Catholics. Nicolson has observed, that he falls foul of all the princes of the time, without regard to their good or ill wishes to the Protestant interest. _Historical Library_, p. 98.—Burnet even charges him with delivering “many things in such a manner, and so strangely, that one would think he had been secretly set on to it by those of the church of Rome;” but adds, “I doubt not he was a sincere Protestant, but violently carried away by some particular conceits.”—_Burnet’s History of the Reformation_, Preface.
[66] The treatise alluded to, seems to be “An Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England, in the several Articles proposed by the late Bishop of Condom,” 4to, 1689. This was circulated by the Protestant divines, in reply to “An Exposition of the Doctrine of the Catholic Church in Matters of Controversy. By the Reverend James Benigne Bossuet, Counsellor to the King, Bishop of Meaux, formerly of Condom. Done into English,” &c. 4to, 1685.
[67] This alludes to a story of an Oxford divine, who imagined he had utterly confounded the grand advocate of the Catholic church, by the stout, though unsupported asseveration, “Bellarmine, thou liest!” This egregious argument is alluded to in the Preface to “The Royal Medal Vindicated;” and in another tract, entitled, “Letter to a Friend concerning Dr Owen’s Principles,” 1670.
[68] Sir Henry Wotton, provost of Eton College, who died in 1639, directed his grave-stone to be thus inscribed:
_Hic jacet hujus Sententiæ primus Author; Disputandi Pruritus, Ecclesiæ Scabies, Nomen Alias Quære._
Wotton’s biographer, honest Isaac Walton, seems to allow, that this sentence, or something like it, was to be elsewhere found, and that Sir Henry was not the first author of it. But he contends, that reason, mixed with charity, must persuade all readers to believe that a holy lethargy had surprised his memory when he assumed the merit of inventing it.
[69] Dr Seth Ward, an eminent mathematician.
[70] Sheldon and Blandford. _Vide Supra_, p. 198.
[71] Dr Blandford, at the time of the conference with the duchess of York, was bishop of Oxford. Being afterwards translated to the diocese of Worcester, he is elsewhere always in this tract called by the latter title. He died bishop of Worcester in 1675.—MALONE.
[72] In allusion to the game of chess, where one of the two pieces, called bishops, always moves on the white, and the other on the black spaces of the chequer.
[73] From the French _rompre en visiere_; a phrase taken from tilting, and used metaphorically for giving an open affront.
[74] During the parliamentary struggles of 1680, the Commons used many arbitrary measures to support their authority, and especially by summarily committing those who, having expressed by petition to the king their abhorrence of addresses for calling a parliament, were called _abhorrers_. “Scarce a day passed, but some _abhorrer_ was dragged before them, and committed to the custody of the serjeant at arms, at the pleasure of the House; and this strange despotism they exercised with so much wantonness, as well as cruelty, that Mr Treby was pleased to say, _they kept an hawk_, (meaning the said serjeant,) _and they must every day find flesh for him_. And the quantity he was this sessions gorged with, gave rise to this proverbial expression—_Take him, Topham!_ [the name of the serjeant,] in all discourse of peremptory commitment.”—_North’s Examen_, p. 561. These arbitrary commitments are elsewhere censured by Dryden, particularly in the Postscript to the History of the League.—See p. 179.
[75] _Nolo episcopare._
[76] Morley is anxious to vindicate himself from being one of the two bishops consulted, for, in Maimbourg’s copy of the Duchesses paper, they were not named. “Supposing,” said he, “there was such a conference betwixt her Highness and two bishops of the church of England, and that what they said to her did increase her desire to embrace the Roman Catholic religion; yet what doth that concern you, (may some man say,) as to your own particular? Are you one of the two of the most learned bishops of the church of England? (for so it is said they were, to whom the Duchess proposed her scruples,) No; I am not, I know I am not, I am sure I am not; but yet (how unlearned, and how unworthy soever,) I am a bishop, and a bishop of the church of England; and therefore as he, to whom it was said, _Tantumne otii tibi à re tuâ est, aliena ut cures?_ answered, _Homo sum, Humani nihil à me alienum puto_; so say I, _Episcopus sum, et Episcopus Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ_, and therefore think myself concerned in whatsoever was said in reproach of episcopacy; especially in reproach of any of the bishops of our own church.”