the Ministers, may be sayd also to be the ministers of All might pray, all by common consent repeat the same prayer, follow the one uttered prayer of the minister, and thus make it their own. In praying minister and people together represent but 'one party,' and 'not the minister a third person, as intercessor or mediator betwixt God and them.' 2 And continuing the argument on the same page, he says But it is nothing alike in prophecying or preaching. For though all the people neuer so much consent unto the preaching or prophecying, yet can it not be said to be their action, as prayer might. For in prophecying or preaching in the relation of these two parties, the Prophecier or Preacher respecteth God, and all the people are the hearers of God, speaking unto them by him, Qui loquitur loquatur eloquia Dei. The works of Calvin and of Beza, his successor at Geneva, are continually referred to in terms of warm appreciation; and the strongly Protestant annotations to the Genevan version of the Bible are frequently drawn upon to confirm the Dean's argument. All this explains why the Defence failed to commend its author to the good graces of the Archbishop, when the higher offices in the Church fell vacant, and a man was needed to carry out his rigorous policy. As a polemic against the reforming party the Defence was equally ineffectual. It cannot be credited that any one, save the author and the printer's reader, ever read it through, unless it were Martin Marprelate. Bridges moves along in his easy shuffle, pausing to tell a story, or to give a long meandering quotation, adding parenthetical remarks, interpolating qualifications, underlining half of his pages to give an artificial emphasis to his prosy inconsequential platitudes; and this for fourteen hundred large quarto pages. Small wonder that Chard the printer had to get a subsidy from the government to save him from bankruptcy. There was on the face of it every likelihood 2 Ibid. p. 681. 1 The Defence, bk. 9, p. 680. of truth in Martin's banter, that the unsaleable stock was used for such menial purposes as the stopping of mustard pots. Whatever inherent dialectical value Bridges' statement of the official episcopal position may have had was lost in his long wearisome periods and his mazy style.1 Even the literary hacks hired by Whitgift to defend Bridges against his agile critic could not be persuaded to wade through his book. They taunt Martin with his vulgar 'So ho!' as though he assumed the offensive position of a teamster and used the venerable Bishops as his drayhorses, oblivious of the fact that Martin was satirically copying the clumsy attempts of Bridges at being facetious.2 Given ample space and verge enough he can tell his story to illustrate the point he desires to enforce, in a pleasant, homely, fireside fashion. As when he would maintain that 'our neighbours experience' is 'no necessary paterne to vs' and gives the Esopian fable of the ass laden with sponges.3 But it is needless to say that neither the Defence nor his innocuous rhyming list of Christ's titles gives the slightest countenance to the suggestion that Bridges wrote the vigorous old play Gammer Gurton's Needle, with its swinging drinking-song beginning— Backe and syde go bare, go bare, Both foote and hande go colde, But bellye, God send thee good ale ynoughe, Further references to the contents of the Defence will be found in Martin's second Tract. 3. Immediate Replies to the Defence.'-The length of the Defence, as well as its discursiveness, made it difficult for the reforming party, who could only print with great difficulty and peril on their secret presses, to reply to its assertions or to supply the syllogisms which the Dean desired to see in proof of the contention of the Non 1 See EPISTLE, 12. 2 See Defence, 76. conformists. But a beginning was made during the same year in A Defence Of the godlie Ministers against the slaunders of D. Bridges, written by Dudley Fenner.1 It is chiefly concerned in replying to Bridges' criticisms on the Preface of the Learned Discourse. For though Bridges refers to his 'dear bretheren' in terms of respect and amity, he is defending the cruel oppression of Whitgift and his High Commission. In mellifluous accents he accuses them of lawlessness and disloyalty. Fenner's tract for the most part is a plain, sober, scriptural statement, not differing greatly from the examples already cited in these introductory pages. In one or two places his indignation at the lawless persecution from which he and his friends were suffering, and the ungenerous misconstruction systematically put upon their simple Christian purposes, quickens the pace of his sentences, and the rebuke of his heartless opponents warms into a measured and dignified passion. The year following a second reply appeared, bearing the title, A Defence of the Ecclesiasticall Discipline ordayned of God to be vsed in his Church. Against a Replie of Maister Bridges to a briefe and plain Declaration of it which was printed in 1584. Which replie he termeth, A Defence of the gouernement established in the Church of Englande, for Ecclesiasticall matters. 1588.2 It is a strong, well-written presentation of the reformer's opposition to the quasiRoman elements in the polity and administration of the established Church, and of the divine character-by which the writer implies the scripturally-warranted character-of that simpler and more democratic order which went under the title of Discipline. Section II.-Martin Marprelate 1. Annus Mirabilis, 1588.-The later chroniclers and 1 It appeared anonymously; but on being reprinted by Waldegrave in A Parte of a Register, Fenner's name was added as the author. 3 Small 4to, 228 pp. Rom. type. It is without divisions, chapters or marginal analysis. historians of the great century looked back fondly to this as the illustrious year in English story. Despite some adverse influences, the nation was recovering itself from the exhaustion of the largely foreign rule of Philip and Mary. The fruits of the Renaissance had been to a degree arrested in England; partly because the energy of that great intellectual upheaval, which expressed itself in art and poetry in the southern half of Europe, among the northern nations had manifested itself in the quickening of religious thought, and in those social ideals which spoke to the hearts and imaginations of the people from the pages of the Bible, now rapidly and freshly translated into the vernacular tongues. And in England, blessed and cursed by the virile and headstrong race of Tudor sovereigns, the expression of this ethical and spiritual quickening had been unnaturally restricted and crushed. The vitality of the religious ordinances under Elizabeth lay not in the showy but empty formalisms borrowed from the cult of Rome, but rather in those elements of innovation which with a niggardly caution were allowed to the people-the discarding of Latin in the liturgy of the Church, the use of the Scriptures in the very idiom of the people, and the participation of the laity in the audible acts of public worship. Had the unrestricted rights of discussion and of preaching been granted, the kindred causes of civil and religious liberty would have advanced by a mighty stride, future internecine struggles would have been avoided, and the material and intellectual development of the people would have proceeded apace. It has been the misfortune of England that its movements of religious reform have been, in a measure, reactions; the reaction from the corrupt life of priests and people under Mary gave to the incipient programme of the Elizabethan religious reformers an ascetic savour; the reaction from the immoderate restrictions of the Commonwealth Puritans made possible the debaucheries of the restoration under Charles II. Yet, despite all restricting forces, the nation, during the thirty years of the reign of Elizabeth, was rapidly realising L itself: public credit was restored, the fleet was recreated, the national defences put in order, and, with the exclusion of the foreign prince and the foreign priest, a growing patriotism, a pride of race, and a love of the birth-land were welding the nation into unity. There was but a small remnant of the Papists, whose religious consistency compelled them to be, first of all, the loyal subjects, not of Elizabeth, but of Pope Sixtus; and next, to be the spies and agents of Philip, as the champion of Popery. The destruction of the Armada was the triumph of English nationalism.1 Outside the ecclesiastical domain-a very wide and inclusive domain in those days-there was enjoyed a large freedom. The new spirit found vent for itself in foreign adventures and in growing trade enterprise. While the Armada was a-building Drake ravaged the coast of the Peninsula, singeing of the beard of the king of Spain'; and in this great year Master Cavendish came home from his voyage round the globe.' Already this quickening of the national spirit was expressing itself in a literature which was destined to make the age illustrious through all time. The previous year Marlowe, in writing Tamburlaine, had determined the essential form of the Elizabethan drama and heralded its greatness. Shakespeare was in London, and the year following produced his first original play, Love's Labour's Lost. Holinshed had gathered his Chronicles and John Stowe his antiquarian Annals. A gift of style and of melody fell from heaven upon that generation of Englishmen. The echoes of their great speech and their spontaneous song have resounded down all our subsequent centuries. Side by side with this resurgent national life, this hearty 1 'The union and fidelity of subjects is quite contrary to what is conceived abroad. They need not fear the face of a stranger. Last year's attempt [the attack of the Spanish Armada] was made so odious that even Catholics would have resisted it, looking for little favour from the merciless Spaniard.'-Draft of a letter by Thomas Barnes, a Jesuit spy in England, to Father Owen at Brussels. Transcribed in the Calendar S. P. Dom. Add. 1580-1625. The original (vol. xxxi. 14) is in an execrable handwriting. |