[1142] The ingenious and sophistical attempt of Dr. John Henry Newman, in his famous Tract Number Ninety (Oxford, 1841), to un-Protestantize the Thirty-nine Articles, has been best refuted by his own subsequent transition to Rome. As a specimen of this non-natural interpretation we mention what he says on Art. XI., which teaches as 'a most wholesome doctrine' 'that we are justified by faith only.' This means that faith is the sole internal instrument of justification, while baptism is the sole outward means and instrument; it does not interfere with the doctrine that good works are also a means of justification (pp. 21 sqq.). That is, the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone, which the Council of Trent condemned, is identical with the Romish doctrine of justification by faith and works, which the same Council taught. A more learned and elaborate work, which minimizes the Protestantism of the Articles and makes them bear a catholic sense, is the Explanation by the late Bishop Forbes of Brechin, above quoted.
[1143] His second wife, whom he secretly married in 1532, before his elevation to the primacy (March, 1533), was a niece of the Lutheran divine Osiander at Nürnberg, who subsequently excited a violent controversy about the doctrine of justification.
[1144] Melanchthon was twice called to England in 1534 ('Ego jam alteris literis in Angliam vocor'). In 1535 he dedicated an edition of his Loci to Henry, at the request of Barnes, who thought it would promote the progress of the Reformation. Henry renewed the invitation in 1538, and requested the Elector of Saxony to send 'Dominum Philippum Melancthonem, in cuius excellenti eruditione et sano judicio a bonis omnibus multa spes reposita est,' together with some other learned men, to England. Under Edward VI. Melanchthon was called again, and in 1553 he was appointed Professor of Divinity in Cambridge, but he never saw England. See Laurence, l.c. pp. 198 sqq.; Hardwick, Hist. of the Art. pp. 52 sqq.; C. Schmidt, Phil. Mel. pp. 283-289.
[1145] So his ultimate doctrine is correctly stated by Hardwick, History of the Reformation, p. 209. Cranmer wrote very extensively on the eucharist, and especially against the Romish mass. See the first volume of the Parker Society's edition of his Works. His change of view is due to the influence of the book of Ratramnus (Bertram) against transubstantiation, the tract of Bullinger on the eucharist, and the personal influence of Ridley, Peter Martyr, and Bucer. Bishop Browne says (on Art. XXVIII. Sect. I. p. 711 of the Am. ed.): 'Both Cranmer and Ridley, to whom we are chiefly indebted for our formularies, maintained the doctrine nearly identical with that maintained by Calvin, and before him by Bertram. . . . These sentiments of our Reformers were undoubtedly embodied in our Liturgy and Articles. . . . In the main, Calvin, Melanchthon in his later views, and the Anglican divines were at one.' John Knox entirely agreed with Cranmer in the Reformed doctrine of the eucharist, and he objected only to the kneeling posture, which led to the insertion of a special rubric in the Prayer-Book. See Lorimer, John Knox in England, pp. 49 and 145.
[1146] See above, p. 335.
[1147] Stähelin, Vol. II. pp. 51 sqq., discusses at length Calvin's correspondence with England. Hardwick speaks of 'the obtrusive letters of Calvin;' but his counsel was solicited from every direction. In the controversy of the English exiles at Frankfort both parties (Cox and Knox) appealed to the Genevan Reformer for advice. Cranmer requested him to write often to King Edward. See Calvin to Farel, June 15, 1551 (Opera, Vol. XIV. fol. 133): 'Cantuariensis nihil me utilius facturum admonuit, quam si ad Regem sæpius scriberem. Hoc mihi longe gratius, quam si ingenti pecuniæ summa ditatus forem.' Viret informed Farel in the same year and month (ibid. fol. 131), that the king sent to Calvin 'coronatos centum et libellum a se conscriptum gallice in papatum, cuius censuram a Calvino exigit. . . . Accepit Calvinus a multis Angliæ proceribus multas literas plenas humanitatis. Omnes testantur se ejus ingenio et laboribus valde oblectari. Hortantur ut sæpe scribat. Protector scripsit nominatim.'
[1148] Strype's Memorials of Cranmer, Vol. I. p. 584; Hardwick, History of the Reformation, p. 212.
[1149] The influence of Knox upon the English Reformation has been more fully brought to light from the Knox Papers in Dr. Williams's library at London by Dr. Peter Lorimer, in John Knox and the Church of England (London, 1875), pp. 98 sqq.
[1150] Zurich Letters, second series, I. 100. Prof. Fisher, in quoting this passage, adds the just remark (The Reformation, p. 341): 'There is no need in bringing further evidence on this point, since the Articles themselves explicitly assert the Calvinistic view [on the Lord's Supper]. In speaking of the English Reformers as Calvinists, it is not implied that they derived their opinions from Calvin exclusively, or received them on his authority. They were able and learned men, and explored the Scriptures and the patristic writers for themselves. Yet no name was held in higher honor among them than that of the Genevan Reformer.'
[1151] When Robert Sanderson (Professor of Theology in Oxford, 1642, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, d. 1663) began to study theology in Oxford about 1606, he was recommended, as was usual at that time, to read Calvin's Institutes, 'as the best and perfectest system of divinity, and the fittest to be laid as the ground-work in the study of this profession.' Blunt, Dictionary of Sects, etc., p. 97. Comp. Hooker's judgment below, p. 607.
[1152] 'Nam hoc scito, post unicæ scripturæ sacratissimam cognitionem, nullos unquam ex omni memoria temporum scriptores extitisse, quos memorabili viro Joanni Calvino tibique præferamus.' See Scrivener's Codex Bezæ, Introd. p. vi., and his Introd. to the Critic. of the New Testament, second edition, 1874, p. 112. Scrivener regards this veneration as an ill omen 'for the peace of the English Church.'
[1153] See my tract on the Revision of the English Version of the New Testament, pp. 28, 29, and Westcott's History of the English Bible, pp. 294 sq. A number of errors in the English Version, as well as excellences, can be traced to Beza.
[1154] Macaulay (in his introductory chapter, p. 39, Boston edition) says: 'The English Reformers were eager to go as far as their brethren on the Continent. They unanimously condemned as anti-Christian numerous dogmas and practices to which Henry had stubbornly adhered, and which Elizabeth reluctantly abandoned. Many felt a strong repugnance even to things indifferent, which had formed part of the polity or ritual of the mystical Babylon.'
[1155] So called because they are mostly derived from the extensive Simler Collection of Zurich, where the Marian exiles, as Bishop Burnet says, 'were entertained both by the magistrates and the ministers--Bullinger, Gualter, Weidner, Simler, Lavater, Gesner, and all the rest of that body--with a tenderness and affection that engaged them to the end of their lives to make the greatest acknowledgments possible for it.' The correspondence was published by the Parker Society (Cambridge, 1842-47, in four vols.), in two series, the first of which covers the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Mary; the second and more important the reign of Elizabeth (1558-1602). They include letters of most of the English Reformers and leading bishops and divines to the Swiss Reformers, with their answers, and are noble monuments of Christian and theological friendship.
[1156] The Suffrage of the Divines of Great Britain concerning the Articles of the Synod of Dort signed by them in the Year 1619. London, 1624. There is, however, at the close of this document (p. 176) a wholesome warning 'concerning the mystery of reprobation,' that it be 'handled sparingly and prudently,' and that 'those fearful opinions, and such as have no ground in the Scriptures, be carefully avoided, which tend rather unto desperation than edification, and do bring upon some of the Reformed Churches a grievous scandal.'
[1157] In accordance with an act of the thirty-seventh year of Henry VIII., which declares that 'Archbishops and the other ecclesiastical persons had no manner of jurisdiction ecclesiastical but by, under, and from his Royal Majesty; and that his Royal Majesty was the only supreme head of the Church of England and Ireland, to whom, by holy Scripture, all authority and power was wholly given,' etc.
[1158] Laud made such a near approach to Rome that he was offered a cardinal's hat (Aug. 1633). When he first maintained, in his exercise for Bachelor of Divinity, in 1604, the doctrine that there could be no true Church without a bishop, he was reproved by the authorities at Oxford, because he 'cast a bone of contention between the Church of England and the Reformed on the Continent.' But when he was in power he spared no effort to force his theory upon reluctant Puritans in England and Presbyterians in Scotland.
[1159] The facts above stated are acknowledged by the best authorities of the Church of England of all parties, such as Strype, Burnet, Lathbury, Keble, and by secular historians such as Hallam and Macaulay. See a calm and thorough argument of Prof. G. P. Fisher, The Relation of the Church of England to the other Protestant Churches, in the 'New-Englander' for January, 1874, pp. 121-172. This article grew out of a newspaper controversy in the New York Tribune, occasioned by the secession of Bishop Cummins after the General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance at New York, October, 1873. This inter-denominational Conference had the express sanction of the Archbishop of Canterbury in a letter addressed to the Dean of Canterbury, one of the prominent delegates. See Proceedings (published N. Y., 1874), p. 720. Comp. also Dr. Washburn, Relation of the Episcopal Church to other Christian Bodies, N. Y., 1874.
[1160] He also says: 'Of what account the Master of Sentences [Peter Lombard] was in the Church of Rome, the same and more amongst the preachers of Reformed Churches Calvin had purchased; so that the perfectest divines were judged they which were skillfulest in Calvin's writings; his books almost the very canon to judge both doctrine and discipline by.' See Hooker's lengthy account of Calvin's life and labors in the Preface to his work on the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Vol. I. pp. 158-174, edition of Dr. John Keble.
[1161] Dr. Keble, who was a High Anglican or Anglo-Catholic of the Oxford school, says in the Preface to his edition (p. xcix.): 'With regard to the points usually called Calvinistic, Hooker undoubtedly favored the tone and language, which has since come to be characteristic of that school, commonly adopted by those theologians to whom his education led him as guides and models on occasions where no part of Calvinism comes expressly into debate. It is possible that this may cause him to appear, to less profound readers, a more decided partisan of Calvin than he really was. At least it is certain that on the following subjects he was himself decidedly in favor of very considerable modifications of the Genevan theology.' Keble then contrasts the strict Calvinism of the Lambeth Articles with the cautious predestinarianism of Hooker as expressed in a fragment which teaches eternal election and the final perseverance of the foreknown elect, without mentioning reprobation, and makes condemnation depend on 'the foresight of sin as the cause.' Judas went to his place, which was 'of his own proper procurement. Devils were not ordained of God for hell-fire, but hell-fire for them; and for men so far as it was foreseen that men would be like them.' There are, however, as Keble himself admits, passages in Hooker which are more strongly Calvinistic, especially on the doctrine of the perseverance of saints, which he considers hardly consistent with his doctrine of universal baptismal grace. But both these doctrines were held by Augustine likewise, from whom Hooker borrowed them.