but for the day, it may have been only because old arrangements were at an end.* However, to return to the troublous narrative, Whittingham broke the matter to Glauberg, a citizen whose friendship had been helpful in getting them the church, that men new come from England had forbidden their minister to preach that day, which was a Wednesday: Glauberg broke it to the magistrates, who ordered that neither the one side nor the other should preach that day. Conferences, complications, a supplication to the magistrates, evidently written by Knox,† ensued: and the magistrates finally bade all to conform themselves to the French order: a strange conclusion, in which nevertheless Cox himself is said to have agreed. If this was done in sincerity, it was of brief con : * Cox, Whitehead, Alvey, Becon, Sandys, Grindal, Bale, Horn, Lever, Sampson, to Calvin. Frankfort, April 5, 1555. Orig. Lett. 753. This was not the letter that Calvin afterwards showed to Whittingham, Troubles, p. 82. The name of Bale is of those attached to this letter: and he and Fox were among those who were flown to Frankfort at this time. He soon returned to Basil, where he found the same leaven working and to a friend at Frankfort he wrote a denunciation of the whole party, in which he charged them with violence and dissimulation, and put on record, perhaps for the first time, one of their most memorable names. "St. Paul and St. Peter prophesied of mockers, liars, blasphemers, and fierce despisers. We have them, Master Ashley, we have them we have them even from among ourselves; yea they be at this present our elders, and their factious affinity. When we require to have common prayers according to our English Order, they tell us that the magistrate will in no case suffer it: which is a most manifest lie. They mock the rehearsal of God's Commandments, and of the Epistles and Gospels in our Communion, and say they are misplaced: they blaspheme our Communion, calling it a popish mass, and say that it hath a popish face, with other fierce despisings and cursed speakings. These mocks, these blasphemies, with such like, they take for invincible theology. With these they build, with these they boast, with these they triumph, in erecting their church of the purity." Bale to Ashley: Strype, vi. 312 (Originals, No. XXXIX.). The whole of this letter is interesting: but unfortunately Bale cannot refrain from assailing the Mass in his own manner. + Hooper and the rochet come in again. Troubles, 74. tinuance and a device, "a most cruel, barbarous and bloody practice, a bloody, cruel, and outrageous attempt" was soon made to get rid of Knox. It was, to bring to the notice of the magistrates of the city Knox's Admonition to Christians, which had been out long time before, and the way in which he spoke of the Emperor there. The magistrates read with reluctance or alarm passages of which hitherto they had been negligent or ignorant and unwillingly or with impetuous indignation laid before Knox the alternative of prison or departure.* Knox made a comfortable sermon to his followers, in the retirement of his own lodgings: and then departed from Frankfort at a velocity which carried him into the territory of a neighbouring monarch hostile to the Emperor. Hereupon the English service was established the victorious Cox assembled the congregation and proposed that they should chose whom they would for the office of bishop, superintendent or pastor, with other officers of the church: and they, agreeing in the name of pastor and the person of Whitehead for the chief, elected likewise two, four, and two, ministers, seniors, and deacons; neither discharging nor acquainting those who were in office already. "They altered our orders in prayers and other things," lamented Whittingham, “to bring in the full use of the great English Book: a stranger was craftily brought in to preach, who had both been at Mass and had also subscribed to blasphemous articles in England. They made Knox purge himself in the pulpit; and then turned him out of the city, delating him of treason before the magistrates. With the magistrates, who had ordered at first the French order, they * It is not unamusing to compare the account in the Troubles, p. 76, with the vindication of themselves which the Coxians sent to Calvin some months later. Orig. Lett. 752. By the one the magistrates moved with disgust and reluctance: by the other with indignant promptitude. wrought to order the English order: and in ordering their officers by election they neglected all order."* And Whittingham herewith sought the city of Basil, sought Geneva, that he might there prepare a refuge for his part of the congregation: on which journey, calling at Zurich to see Bullinger, he heard from him an assertion concerning Cranmer which has drawn considerable attention of late years.† To Basil and Geneva he and his indignant flock departed after a bitter altercation with the new pastor Whitehead, with Cox and the rest of those who maintained the English service. In Geneva they chose Knox, when he should have ventured back from France, and Goodman for their pastors: and they set up and published an order of service which was to their * Whittingham to a Friend in England. Troubles, 79. + That Cranmer designed to have issued a third Prayer Book. This has been reproachfully laid to his charge by some modern writers. But is there any good evidence of it: any traces of such a design among his remains? If not, it is hard that his memory should suffer under the mere imputation. So far as I know, this passage in the Troubles is the only source of it: a passage, it will be seen, of somewhat difficult construction. Whittingham "in his journey passed by Zurich to know of Mr. Bullinger what he thought of the Book of England, for that he (who had reported to Mr. Williams, Whittingham, Gilby, and others that Cranmer Bishop of Canterbury had drawn up a Book of Prayer an hundred times more perfect than this that we now have, yet the same could not take place, for that he was matched with such a wicked clergy and convocation, with other enemies), even he, I say, stood in this, that Mr. Bullinger did like well of the English order, and had it in his study." p. 82. To say no more, this is not direct evidence. However, when Neal gets hold of it, "it was credibly reported that the Archbishop of Canterbury had drawn up a form of common prayer much more perfect, but that he could not make it take place because of the corruption of the clergy." Puritans, i. 99. And so it has gone on. "Under which ministry they reject the whole frame and fabric of the Reformation made in England, conform themselves wholly to the fashions of the Church of Geneva, and therewith entertain also the Calvinian doctrines, to the discredit of the state of the Church of England in King Edward's time, the great grief of the martyrs and other godly men in the reign of Queen Mary, and to the raising of most unquenchable combustions in all parts of the Church under Queen Elizabeth." Heylin, ii. 182. liking. So ended the first part of the troubles, about the end of the year 1555. Howbeit peace prevailed not lastingly and in the course of a year a second departure from Frankfort followed the extrusion of the Knoxians. Cox indeed is heard of but little more: and Whitehead the pastor, if he had been induced by Cox to take office, seems to have been half-hearted. He soon laid down his charge, and was succeeded by Horn, who blew a furious storm. But the cause of strife was not of great public value: not the form of service, but internal discipline. It began with a quarrel, of which the nature has been concealed, between the pastor and one Ashley, a member of the congregation: and rose into a civil war between the body of officers and the congregation: of which it is not necessary to go through the miserable minutes: to recount the fetches, checks, cavillations, insinuations, defamations on one side or the other: to reckon how often Horn and his fellow ministers, exclaiming that all shadow of authority was taken from them by the congregation, left their thrones and sat down as private members how often they were induced to return: how often Horn ran to the door and back from the door: how obstinacy grew on both parts, before he and his party finally shook off the dust of Frankfort from their feet and made a solitude. ; Where men are on a level and in narrow bounds, they fight implacably till one side departs for ever. This ineffaceable tendency is the justification of empires, of kingdoms, of bishoprics, of all containing authority. Here were two secessions in one religious body in two or three years. The congregational system was not commended by this appearance.* * The remark of the unknown editor, or reviser, of the Troubles, applied to the latter part of the narrative, seems not inappropriate to the whole. "This controversy I find written by the hands of such as are both learned and of credit: but yet, I must needs say, by those that were parties in this broil." p. 176. The fury of the strife appalled the somewhat neutral Fox. "I should write an Iliad," he exclaimed, "if I rhapsodized all those deeds: the variance, abuse, measureless scurrility of language, suspicions, intrigues. I could never have believed that there was so much bitterness in men whom the constant study of the divine Books might have disposed to gentleness and mildness." To Martyr. Strype, vi. 310. (Originals, No. XXXVIII.) |