John J. Blunt

“ It is needless to add, that the friars at length became as rottenness to the bones of the Roman catholic church; that, by the time of Erasmus and Luther, they were the butt at which every dissolute idler, on every tavern bench, discharged his shaft, hitting the establishment, and religion itself, through their sides; that they were exhibited in pot-house pictures as foxes preaching, with the neck of a stolen goose peeping out of the hood behind; as wolves giving absolutions, with a sheep muffled up in their cloaks ”

“ For what had the church under its new discipline and organisation to oppose to these restless and inquisitive spirits? Could it not meet the evil, and extinguish it, whilst it was yet done in the green tree? Alas! its clergy were unfit for so delicate and difficult a work. The Reformation, owing to the violence which had attended and disgraced a noble cause, had depressed them as a body; doubtless there were of their number many most able men; none greater than some of them have been since born of woman ”

“ This is a sad falling off from the tolerant principles of his youth; but meanwhile many feverish years had passed over the head of Sir Thomas More, and inspired him with a dread of those who were given to change—the crisis which he had helped in a degree to call up, had come at the call, and the magician stood aghast at the potency of his own spell. We are unfair judges of the sentiments and conduct of men who lived upon the verge of the Reformation. We are born when order has arisen out of confusion, and a pure faith come forth from the refiner’s fire ”

“ Let us hope that to this most fruitful field of truth, and purity and piety, and charity, Mr. Blunt’s delightful “Sketch” may turn many an eager eye and many a vigorous foot. And for ourselves, dear brother, when the cares and disappointments and disquietudes of life disturb or weary us, and we are tempted to fall back, or turn aside, or falter, on the high, “right onward” course of duty, next to the Author of our faith, and the bright cloud of prophets and apostles who stand nearest to his throne, let us direct our eyes to the illustrious fathers of the English Reformation. ”

“ Suffice it, however, not to have passed over in silence so fruitful a source of popular discontent as abuses in the administration of the law—abuses which could fail of alienating multitudes from a church with which they were identified. It is not, perhaps, a circumstance less worthy of notice from being often overlooked, and whilst the more obvious evils which clamorously demanded redress are set forth to the full, one which touched men in their property, their affections—which met them in the affairs of “this working-day world” at every turn—is noticed casually, or not at all. ”

“ Then did Ridley move the Lord Williams to intercede that the leases which he had made as Bishop of London might be confirmed; and when he had relieved his conscience of this his only worldly care, a kindled faggot was laid at his feet; Latimer, who was fastened to the same stake, exclaiming at the instant, in words that have become memorable, “Be of good comfort, master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.” ”

“ On a review of these several works by which the Church of England was restored, it can scarcely fail to be matter of admiration and wonder, that so fair a fabric should have risen under the hands of the Reformers out of such disorder, almost at once; that in the very agony of a first attempt they should have thrown off a comprehensive scheme of doctrine and devotion which scarcely called for any subsequent revision; that they should not only have hewn out such admirable materials, but have brought them, too, in so short a season, to so excellent a work. ”

“ Gentlemen:—I have attended with much interest to the volumes of the “Library of Christian Knowledge,” as they have successively appeared; and exceedingly rejoice, both in the plan of the work, and thus far, in its execution. I have a high opinion of the piety and the talents of the Rev. Mr. Hooker, the editor, and consider him as well qualified to conduct a work of this nature. If the future volumes should bear a stamp similar to that of those which have hitherto appeared, I shall be glad—and every friend of genuine Christianity, I should hope, would be glad—to see them universally circulated. ”

“ With such discretion did our Reformers retain the good which was in the Church of Rome whilst they rejected the evil, putting the one in vessels to be kept, and casting the other away; with such temper did they refuse to be scared by the abuses of past times, or the scrupulosities of their own, into narrowing needlessly that ground on which they invited a nation to take its stand, and which they well knew must be broad to admit of it. And so it came about, that a form of faith and worship was conceived which recommended itself to the piety and good sense of the people ”

“ Now it is precisely these “fixed, calm, and Christian views in divinity” which, in this age, and especially in this country, are most wanted—which are sought for in vain in the din of religious controversy and the stir of religious excitement—and for the want of which, to the joy of the infidel, and to the shame and grief of the meek searcher after truth, who would walk humbly with his God, Christianity, at times, appears almost unchristianised. ”

“ Questions touching the probate of wills, administrations, appeals, visitations, and the like, afforded but too much opportunity for collision, and the church was scandalised by a contest, rather for the fees than for the faith. [104] Thus did the establishment suffer both from within and from without: from within, by the decay of all discipline; from without, by the forfeiture of all respect.
Nor was this all. Nothing contributes so much to disgust the public mind with the existing order of things as the faulty administration of justice. ”

“ It will be difficult to find a book, that so drives us into the contemplation of ourselves; that so accurately analyzes the thoughts and feelings of men, and so vividly exhibits the self-flattery, by which we cheat ourselves into the belief, that we reverence and admire the character of God, when all we admire and reverence, is but the image of ourselves, which we have contrived to ascribe to him. ”

“ The Almighty has been ever wont to make such provision for the continuance of sound doctrine. Whilst all flesh was corrupting its way, still a household or two were left to keep his name from perishing, and to rally the true religion again—an Enos, an Enoch, or a Noah. When idolatry had once more spread itself over the world, almost to the extinction of the knowledge of the Most High, a few chosen vessels were left to the preservation of it still—an Abraham, a Lot, a Melchizedec, a Job. ”

“ REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I. BRITISH AND ANGLO-SAXON CHURCHES.—INTERCOURSE WITH ROME.—EARLY CORRUPTIONS.
The Reformation is not to be regarded as a great and sudden event which took the nation by surprise. It was merely the crisis to which things had been tending for some centuries; and if the fire did at last run over the country with wonderful rapidity, it was because the trees were all dry. It is a mistake to suppose that whilst the Roman catholic religion prevailed all was unity. ”

“ He could confess whosoever might come to him. It was to no purpose that a parish priest refused absolution to any black sheep of his flock; away he went to a Franciscan, and absolution was given him at once; the more readily, indeed, as an opportunity was thus afforded the friar of expressing his contempt of every ecclesiastical body but his own. Nor did he enter into the labours of the parochial minister only; he had nobler game in another class of seculars—the cathedral clergy. These he reduced to poverty, and the venerable edifices to which they belonged to decay. ”

“ For to the Reformation we owe it, that a knowledge of religion has kept pace in the country with other knowledge; and that, in the general advance of science, and the general appetite for enquiry, this paramount principle of all has been placed in a position to require nothing but a fair field and no favour, in order to assert its just pretensions. ”

“ Well would it be for the peace of the world if this consideration had its due influence that should paralyse, but that should moderate; if men would not subject society to needless confusion, whilst they attempt to expel nature by a fork, sure as it is to recoil and recover itself; if they would spare themselves and others the inconvenience of a struggle, where they fight as one beating the air. ”

“ At the period when the papal power was put down in England, nearly twenty years had elapsed since Luther first took up his parable against papal abuses. In this interval, a generation of aged defenders of the ancient faith had been gathered to their fathers, and had given place to such as had grown up under the influence of a better star. The press had been active, of which the wonderful influence was first made known upon this great question. The pure doctrines and heroic deeds of the German reformers circulated throughout England. Luther was in every mouth—ballads sung of him. ”

“ These are miserable and disgusting details; but if they are so to write and read, what must they have been to Cranmer and his colleagues to witness! How must their righteous souls have been vexed! Those persons who give to our reformers credit for the courage which they displayed in the flames, and regard their sufferings as confined to their martyrdom, do them poor justice. To jostle with so many offensive obstacles for so many long years; to persevere unto the end in the midst of so much to thwart, to disappoint, to irritate ”

“ As it is, we have nothing to conceal; nothing to evade; nothing to impose; the reasonableness, as well as righteousness, of our reformed faith recommends it; and whatever may be the shocks it may have to sustain from scoffs, and doubts, and clamour, and licentiousness, and seditious tongues, and an abused press, it will itself, we doubt not, prevail against them all, and save, too (as we trust) , the nation which has cherished it, from the terrible evils, both moral, social, and political, that come of a heart of unbelief. ”

“ It is not thought out of place to introduce here this brief vindication of a book, which, so far as it is a contemporary history, has been, both of old, and of late an object of unfair depreciation, but from which no right-hearted Protestant can rise, without being at once a sadder and better man;—a book, out of which we shall now fearlessly draw our information, [249] whilst we offer to our readers a few examples of those terrible sufferings which it is at once humiliating to think that man could inflict, and animating to think that man could so nobly bear. ”

“ It is possible to imagine that had an infidel age, instead of an age of sound religious inquiry, immediately succeeded the times of Erasmus, his levity would have frequently proved mischievous, and the blows which he had intended should tell against the church of Rome only, and which under Luther’s management did there spend themselves, would have been found misplaced, and apt to recoil. He was, perhaps, even more ambitious of reviving learning than religion ”

“ Gardiner might take advantage of such changes, as in fact he did, and have his sneer; but nothing could be more natural than that a sincere man, only intent on following out truth, lead where it might, should have arrived at it by degrees, and by precisely such degrees as these—that he should see men as trees walking, before he saw them as men; and nothing can argue more strongly the sound and sober principles upon which the Reformation proceeded, than this its gradual advance. ”

“ It was not till a third fire had been lighted that the gunpowder exploded: but neither did this end his suffering; for he still continued to pray in a loud voice, “Lord Jesus, have mercy [254] upon me!” At length his tongue became swollen so that he could not articulate; and one of his arms dropped off; and after he had thus lingered three quarters of an hour, in all the bitterness of the bitterest of deaths, he bowed forwards and yielded up his life. ”

“ If we take up a ‘system of divinity,’ whether in the shape of a body of Articles, or a regular treatise, comprising a discussion of all the great points of the Christian covenant, useful and necessary as such things are, each in its own way, yet it cannot be but that they present all these great points to us in a controversial view and with a controversial air. ”

“ Augustin was the founder of the English church as distinguished from the British, for the Britons made a conscience of leaving the Pagan invaders to die in their ignorance and their sins: and it is probable that both in doctrine and discipline the religion of this country owed to the great Apostle of England (as he has been called) its revival, extension, and permanent establishment. But Gregory was no pope in the more modern sense of the word; it was his desire that the church of Rome should be followed by the church of England when there was reason for it, not otherwise ”