RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Parker
constitution in an Anglican sense), to regulate the restoration of its rights to convocation, to bring order into the financial affairs of the Church, and to guard the bishoprics and other benefices against unworthy men. Together with convocation, in 1562 he recast the forty-two articles of religion into thirty-nine, and gave them their final shape in 1571. He took great interest in, and wrote the prefaces for, the Old and New Testament of the " Bishops' Bible," a version which was to supersede Tyndale's and the Geneva versions. The " Advertisements " drawn up by him (see Advertisements of Elizabeth) were not formally sanctioned by the queen, but he enforced their provisions with strictness as an irreducible minimum of decent ceremony in public worship.
His scholarly work brought him more happiness than his administrative. He was a pioneer in the study of English antiquities, especially of the Anglo- Saxon period. He employed the large means which in his later years were at his disposal for the collection and preservation of valuable ancient manuscripts in danger of destruction at the dissolution of the monasteries. A single agent of his, Stephen Batman, asserts that in four years he collected on the archbishop's account no less than 6,700 manuscripts in England and elsewhere. These priceless collections he left to his old college, where they are now the chief treasure of the library. On them are based the first editions of Gildas, Asser, Aelfric, Matthew Paris, the Flares historiarum, and other ancient chronicles; and Parker was the first to recognize the value of the Anglo-Saxon works for the study of English history, law, speech, and religious belief.
Among other works, he wrote, assisted by G. Ackworth and J. Josseline, De antiquitate Britannicoe ecclesice et privilegiis ecclesice Cantuariensis (London, 1572), a collection of various treatises; and independently An Admonition to All Such as shall Intend hereafter to Enter the State of Matrimonie Godly, and Agreeable to Laws (1605 [?]); and Archbishop Parker's Prophecy (1715). He
wrote a preface for and made additions to T. Martin's A Defense of Priestes Mariages (London, 1562?); and edited Aelfrics sermon A Testimonie of Antiquitie Shewing the Ancient Fayth in the Church of England Touching the Sacrament of the Body and Bloude of the Lord (1566); and Mathew of Paris' Historia Maior (1571).
Bibliography: The chief work ia J. Stiype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, London, 1711, 3 vols., Oxford, 1821. Consult further: His Correspondence, ed. J. Bruce and T. T. Perowne for Parker Society, Cambridge, 1853; W. F. Hook, Archbishops of Canterbury, vol. iv., 12 vols., Loadon, 1860-76; J. Josselin, Historiola collegii Corporis Christi, ed. J. W. Clark, Cambridge, 1880; W. Bender, War Parker ein gultig geweihter Bischoff Wurzburg, 1877; G. W. Child, Church and State under the Tudors, pp. 188 sqq., London, 1890; F. G. Lee, Church under Queen Elizabeth, pp. 30 sqq., London, 1896; J. H. Overton, The Church in England, i. 435-439 et passim, London, 1897; W. H. Frere, English Church (1558-1626), London, 1904 (full and valuable); DNB, xliii. 254-263; and, in general, the works on the ecclesiastical history of the period.
PARKER, THEODORE: American Unitarian; b. in Lexington, Mass., Aug. 24, 1810; d. in Florence, Italy, May 10, 1860. His father, an unpros-
perous farmer of active mind, held rationalistic views, while his mother had ardent religious feeling without doctrinal interests. Instinctively and sensitively religious, the child of four years heard the voice of conscience speaking " clear and loud," and before the age of ten was terrified by the preaching of eternal damnation. His early education was limited to a district school, with one term at the Lexington Academy (1826), but by extraordinary aptitude and the district teacher's help, he was able to win admission to Harvard College (1830), and was exceptionally allowed to take the annual examinations of the college class without residence and without a final degree. From 1827 he taught in district schools, working in the summers on the home farm. In Mar., 1831, he became assistant in a private school in Boston and a year later opened a private school in Watertown. Entering the Harvard Divinity School in Apr., 1834, he graduated July, 1836, already amazingly erudite and commanding twenty languages. After preaching in various parishes he married Lydia Cabot, Apr. 30, 1837, and was ordained June 21, as pastor of the First Parish (Unitarian) Church in West Roxbury, Mass. Though but little affected as yet by German Biblical criticism he had begun (1836) to translate De Wette's Einleitung in das Alte Testament. His early intellectual friendships were with Convers Francis, George Ripley, William Ellery Channing, and other members of the Transcendental Club, but he shrank from the pantheistic tendency of Emerson and wrote unfavorably of Strauss' " Life of Jesus " (Christian Examiner, 1840). Entering the discussion of Emerson's Divinity School address with a pseudonymous " Levi Blodgett " letter (1840), he professed belief in miracles but held them " not the sole or best evidence." Believing, however, that conservative Unitarians in reaction against Emerson were retreating to outworn positions, he boldly discussed " The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity " at an ordination in South Boston, May 19, 1841. The permanent essence of Christianity is the influence of Jesus and his religion, which is identical with " absolute, pure religion." It is its own evidence and needs no support from miracles, the reality of which is not denied. As a young man of boldly radical tendency Parker was at once refused exchanges in the Unitarian pulpits of his neighborhood, though laymen induced him to proclaim his views in lectures which were published in amplified form, A Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion (Boston, 1842). This was the theological crisis of his career. Refusing to withdraw voluntarily from the Boston Association of Ministers (Jan. 23, 1843), he was shunned by most of these associates and felt keen suffering in his isolation. There was no formal breach in his ecclesiastical standing. He remained permanently a member of the American Unitarian Association and of the Berry Street Conference of Ministers. After a year in Europe (Sept., 1843-Sept., 1844) he resumed his pastorate in West Roxbury with additional preaching in Boston, beginning Feb., 1845, in the Melodeon Hall. In Jan., 1846, he withdrew from Roxbury to be pastor of this Twenty-eighth Congregational Society of Boston which, after 1852,
Parker Pasagians