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it was received. "They want us to send them one or two to take the charge and government of their church," was the conclusion of the learned men of Strasburg: and they proposed to send them a bishop, Ponet, Scory, or Bale, or the late Dean of Christchurch, Cox, who had been one of the memorable commission that first framed the English Prayer Book in King Edward's days. Nor were they wrong altogether, as it regarded the point of necessity for Frankfort had already invited Haddon to come; and, when he excused himself, Knox from Geneva. But Frankfort expected the election of any person to be reserved to herself: nor was any election the purpose of the circulatory letter of the congregation. To shine forth was their desire: that the exhibition of their model might attract all men: that they might be the centre of the exiles: that there might be no church but Frankfort. The learned men at Zurich understood them: those guests of Bullinger, who took not the name of church or congregation, but entitled themselves students: and they answered that if it were really needful for them to break their fellowship, hurt their studies, and dissolve their exercises, that they might go to Frankfort, they would not refuse: but that they rather saw no such need: and that in all events they were resolved to stand by the Second Prayer Book of Edward the Sixth.* However they sent to them the rich and benevolent Chambers, who finding that they could not assure him the full use of the English Book, went back, but soon returned with Grindal, with whom he was to urge the establishing of the Book of England, not in such ceremonies that the foreign commonwealth could not bear, but in substance and effect. Knox, who, since the Genevan bramble the office, which the Argentine olive and the Tigurine vine had refused, had accepted, was there by this time, and * 23 October, Troubles, 53.

Whittingham, a very leading man in Frankfort, asked them what they meant by the substance and effect of the Book. Not to be so drawn, the envoys answered that they had no commission to dispute: but requested the congregation to say what parts of the Book they would admit : and advised them to get a separate church. The answer was that they would admit whatever stood with God's word, and that a separate church could not be had: and the envoys departed bearing home a less gentle letter: which stayed the business, so far as it regarded Zurich.* In truth the alleged danger of shocking the French by ceremonies went very well with the real difficulty of disliking ceremonies: and already the bare Genevan form, translated into English, was in Frankfort in the hands of divers of the congregation. This Genevan form was offered to Knox for public use: but he wisely refused to use it unless it were accepted by the other English churches: and, as he would not use the Prayer Book of England, there was a deadlock for a short time, before the arrival of the ambulatory Lever: who being elected one of the ministers, assembled the congregation, and proposed to their consent an order of his own, to be on trial with himself for three months. To him they hearkened and yet, finding that his form was "not altogether such as was fit for a right reformed church," they yielded not unto it. "The flame is lighted up among us English," exclaimed Thomas Sampson to Calvin, "a strong controversy is arisen, some desiring to set aside altogether the Book of reformation of the Church of England, some only to abolish kneeling at the Lord's Supper, the surplice, and other matters: others would retain the form, because the Archbishop of Canterbury defends the doctrine as sound, and because the other forms give no just reason for change. Pray give

* 3 December, Troubles, 61.

Calvin

your best consideration to our disturbances.' was already so employed: for Knox and Whittingham had written in Latin a kind of description, or plat, of the whole Prayer Book of England, treating it very contemptuously, and had sent it to Calvin. He in turn denominated it the leavings of popish dregs, trifling and childish, containing many tolerable fooleries, adding the sarcastic remark that if the upholders of it feared lest in England they should be thought to have fallen from the truth, and so made that contention, they were deceived, and would see themselves remain in a deep gulf, while others went beyond midcourse.† At length an Order of Service was devised by Knox, Whittingham, and Lever, which was to be on trial to the first of April, and then to be solemnly submitted to the final judgment of the five most notable men whom the Reformation now owned upon the Continent: Calvinus, Musculus, Martyr, Bullengerus, and Vyretus. In this composition some parts were admitted from the English Book. Mutual gratulations followed a happy agreement; the Holy Communion, which had been omitted for three months, was ministered in sign of peace, Pullanus, the French pastor, partaking with the English.

Before the term of trial was expired, came to Frankfort out of England, Doctor Cox, the well-known theologian of Oxford, with some others. The later emigrants, it appears, were regarded with some contempt, as an inferior class, by those who had chosen the lot of

* Sampson to Calvin, Strasburg, Feb. 23, 1555. Orig. Lett. 170. This letter indicates, at a time before the arrival of Cox, a more divided state than is allowed in the Troubles of Frankfort: and such a state would account for the caution of Knox. The author of the Troubles makes the dread strife begin with Cox's coming.

+ The "Description of the Liturgy, or Book of Service which is used as in England," and Calvin's " Answer and Judgment," January 22, 1555, are in the Troubles, p. 64.

Cox came on March 13. Troubles, 72.

exile from the first. It was whispered of some of them, by one of them it is said to have been confessed, that they had broken the point of religious honour by going to the Latin Mass in England, before they escaped: of some it was affirmed that they had subscribed to "wicked articles," to "blasphemous articles," such as were propounded to the religious prisoners by Harpsfield or Bonner, and that it was after an ignominious release that they came abroad. In their new abode, however, they were zealous to maintain the Book of England. The first time that they were at the worship, it is said that they broke the Order, that had been so painfully composed, by responding after the minister: and in answer to remonstrances declared that "they would do as they had done in England, and have the face of an English church." On the next Sunday one of them suddenly mounted the pulpit and read the English Litany, Cox and the rest responding. In the afternoon of the same day Knox, for it was his turn to preach, rebuked the new comers. "A godly agreement has been ungodlily broken," said he, "the English Book is full of superstitions, as I offer to prove before all men. God's anger has been stirred up against England because there was slackness to reform religion when time and place was granted: religion was not brought to perfection: look at the want of discipline: one man may have four or five benefices: see what trouble Hooper suffered for the rochet." A conference followed, a day or two after, where the new comers demanded to have voices or votes in the congregation: Knox magnanimously supported this: they were admitted: and Cox straightway forbad Knox to meddle any more in the congregation.

Such conduct, as it is related in the work that derives its title from the troubled subject, seems inexplicably arrogant. It might be suspected that there was more

in the matter than appears: that the agreement was not so generally acceptable in the old congregation but that the new comers had found adherents: that Knox and his party were not well pleasing to all: or that the new comers themselves, on being acquainted with the agreement, had only accepted it in part, and in their public behaviour followed it only so far as they had accepted it: in a word, that the interruption was not so sudden, and the party so small as it might be thought. As much may be gathered from an important letter, which Cox and his part wrote to Calvin a few weeks later, a letter signed by scarce any who had not been exiles long before Cox, from which it appears that they had obtained from the magistrates of Frankfort permission to use the English rites, but that for the sake of agreement they had renounced certain things, as, private baptisms, confirmation, saints' days, kneeling to receive, the surplice, crosses, and the like. "We retain however," said they, "the remainder of the form of prayer, and of the administration of the Sacraments, and this with the consent of almost the whole church." It was not inconsistent with this stipulation that they should consider themselves free to read the Litany, and make the responses, as they did. From the same source it appears further that a regular election of officers was held forthwith, at which the greatest care was taken to have liberty of voting: and, remarkable to relate, the Forty-two Articles of King Edward were set forth before the election, when all but some few willingly subscribed to them. "For what kind of an election, they said, must be expected unless the voters shall previously have agreed as to doctrine?" One pastor, two preachers, four elders, and two deacons were therewith appointed by vote. If then Knox was forbidden by Cox to interfere further; which prohibition, as it afterwards appears, was

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