Three Essays on the Leading Principles of the Reformation: Illustrating Its Catholic Character From Its Constitutional, Doctrinal, and Ritual History (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

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Excerpt from Three Essays on the Leading Principles of the Reformation: Illustrating Its Catholic Character From Its Constitutional, Doctrinal, and Ritual History

English Prayer Book and Bible. So far from Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, or any one else being the Father of the Reformation, these individuals might never have lived at all for anything that appears in those documents. If the English Reformation had owed anything to the foreign Reformers, common gratitude would have instinctively brought up some allusion to them, and yet there is no reference to them even in so discursive a production as the Preface to the Bible; while that of the Prayer Book distinctly asserts the leading principle of its reconstruction to have been a reference to antiquity, as indeed the Preface to the Bible also asserts in regard to the work of its translation. In fact, take whatever line of in vestigation we will, the endeavour to trace the character of the Reformation up to the strong will of any individual, English or foreign, will eminently fail. And not only so, but we shall pro bably be brought to the conclusion, that whenever any individual had succeeded, to any extent, in initiating a machinery by which the course of the Reformation should be turned aside and brought more within the range of his own personal bias, that individual became involved in difficulties and ruin, and ultimately gave up his life as a sacrifice to the just Nemesis which avenges every Offence against the Providence of god. Such was the fate, to name no others, of Cranmer and Ridley, who both endeavoured to set Lady Jane Grey upon the throne, not because they thought her the law ful heir to the crown Of England, but because they believed that the cause of the Reformation would be forwarded by her influence if she became sovereign, and retarded by that of Mary.

The only conclusion at which one can arrive is, that the Reforma tion of the Church Of England, as it went on its way, was kept almost entirely independent of personal influence, so far as that influence deviated in any great degree from the course assigned to the Reformation by the Will higher than man's which is able to control all events, and mould them for good in spite of every dith culty thrown in the way by the opposing powers of evil.

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