to have any dispute with the pope, as was often between princes and popes: and it will be found in the remarks on the former volumes, that he in another letter says he was a sorter of that book. This seems to relate only to the digesting it into method and order. How far King Henry was sincere in pretending scruples of conscience, with relation to his first marriage, can only be known to God. His suit of divorce was managed at a vast expense, in a course of many years; in all which time, how strong soever his passion was for Anne Boleyn, yet her being with child so soon after their marriage is a clear evidence that till then they had no unlawful commerce. It does not appear that Wolsey deserved his disgrace, unless it was, that by the commission given to the two legates, they were empowered to act conjunctly or severally so that, though Campegio refused to concur, he might have given sentence legally, yet he being trusted by the pope, his acting according to instructions did not deserve so severe a correction and had any material discovery been made to render Wolsey criminal, it may be reasonably supposed it would have been published. : The new flatterers falling in with the king's passion, outdid and ruined Wolsey. More was the glory of the age, and his advancement was the king's honour more than his own, who was a true Christian philosopher. He thought the cause of the king's divorce was just, and as long as it was prosecuted at the court of Rome, so long he favoured it : but when he saw that a breach with that court was like to follow, he left the great post he was in, with a superior greatness of mind. It was a fall great enough, to retire from that into a private state of life but the carrying matters so far against him as the king did, was one of the justest reproaches of that reign. More's superstition seems indeed contemptible, but the constancy of his mind was truly wonderful. : Cromwell's ministry was in a constant course of flattery and submission, but by that he did great things, that amaze one, who has considered them well. The setting up the king's supremacy, instead of the usurpations of the papacy, and the rooting out the monastic state in England, considering the wealth, the numbers, and the zeal, of the monks and friars in all the parts of the kingdom, as it was a very bold undertaking, so it was executed with great method, and performed in so short a time, and with so few of the convulsions that might have been expected, that all this shows what a master he was, that could bring such a design to be finished in so few years, with so little trouble or danger. But in conclusion, an unfortunate marriage to which he advised the king not proving acceptable, and he being unwilling to destroy what he himself had brought about, was, no doubt, backward in the design of breaking it when the king had told him of it: and then, upon no other visible ground, but because Anne of Cleve grew more obliging to the king than she was formerly, the king suspected that Cromwell had betrayed his secret, and had engaged her to a softer deportment, on design to prevent the divorce; and did upon that disgrace and destroy him. The duke of Norfolk was never till Cromwell's fall the first in favour; but he had still kept his post by perpetual submission and flattery. He was sacrificed at last to the king's jealousy, fearing that he might be too great in his son's infancy; and, being considered as the head of the popish party, might engage in an uneasy competition with the Seymours, during the minority of his son: for the points he was at first examined on were of an old date, of no consequence, and supported by no proof. When the king first threw off the pope's yoke, the Reformers offered him in their turn all the flatteries they could decently give and if they could have had the patience to go no further than he was willing to parcel out a reformation to them, he had perhaps gone further in it: but he seemed to think, that as it was pretended in popery, that infallibility was to go along with the supremacy, therefore those who had yielded to the one ought likewise to submit to the other; he turned against them when he saw that their complaisance did not go so far: and upon that, the adherers to the old opinions returned to their old flatteries, and for some time seemed to have brought him quite back to them; which probably might have wrought more powerfully, but that he found the old leaven of the papacy was still working in them; so that he was all the while fluctuating; sometimes making steps to a reformation, but then returning back to his old notions. One thing probably wrought much on him. It has appeared, that he had great apprehensions of the council that was to meet at Trent, and that the emperor's engagements to restrain the council from proceeding in his matter, was the main article of the new friendship made up between them and it may be very reasonably supposed, that the emperor represented to him, that nothing could secure that matter so certainly as his not proceeding to any further innovations in religion: more particularly his adhering firmly to the received doctrine of Christ's presence in the sacrament, and the other articles set forth by him: this agreeing with his own opinion, had, as may be well 210 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. imagined, no small share in the change of his conduct at that time. The dextrous application of flattery had generally a powerful effect on him: but whatsoever he was, and how great soever his pride and vanity, and his other faults were, he was a great instrument in the hand of Providence for many good ends: he first opened the door to let light in upon the nation: he delivered it from the yoke of blind and implicit obedience: he put the Scriptures in the hands of the people, and took away the terror they were formerly under by the cruelty of the ecclesiastical courts: he declared this church to be an entire and perfect body within itself, with full authority to decree and regulate all things, without any dependence on any foreign power: and he did so unite the supreme headship over this church to the imperial crown of this realm, that it seemed a just consequence that was made by some in a popish reign, that he who would not own that this supremacy was in him, did by that renounce the crown, of which that title was made so essential a part, that they could no more be separated. He attacked popery in its strongholds-the monasteries and destroyed them all; and thus he opened the way to all that came after, even down to our days: so that while we see the folly and weakness of man in all his personal failings, which were very many and very enormous, we at the same time see both the justice, the wisdom, and the goodness of God, in making him, who was once the pride and glory of popery, become its scourge and destruction; and in directing his pride and passion so as to bring about, under the dread of his unrelenting temper, a change, that a milder reign could not have compassed without great convulsions and much confusion: above all the rest, we ought to adore the goodness of God, in rescuing us by his means from idolatry and superstition; from the vain and pompous shows in which the worship of God was dressed up, so as to vie with heathenism itself, into a simplicity of believing, and a purity of worship, conform to the nature and attributes of God, and the doctrine and example of the Son of God. May we ever value this as we ought; and may we, in our tempers and lives, so express the beauty of this holy religion, that it may ever shine among us, and may shine out from us, to all round about us; and then we may hope that God will preserve it to us, and to posterity after us, for ever. BOOK IV. Of what happened during the reign of King Edward the Sixth, from the year 1547 to the year 1553. I HAD Such copious materials when I wrote of this king, partly from the original council-book, for the two first years of that reign, but chiefly from the Journal writ in that king's own hand, that I shall not be able to offer the reader so many new things in this as I did in the former, and as I may be able to do in the succeeding reign. Some gleanings I have, which I hope will not be unacceptable. I begin with acknowledging a great error committed in copying out a letter of Luther's, that I found among Bucer's Collections. The noble Seckendorf was the first that admonished me of this; but with a modesty suitable to so great a man: without that rancour in which some among ourselves have vented their ill-nature against me. I took the sure method to confess my error, and to procure an exact collated copy of that paper, from that learned body, to whose library it belongs; which will be found in the Collection (No. i). It is an original in Luther's own hand; but it could not have been easily read, if Bucer had not writ out a copy of it, which is bound up in the same volume with the original. It was an instruction that Luther gave to Melancthon, when he went into Hesse, in the year 1534, to meet and treat with Bucer upon that fatal difference, concerning the manner of the presence in the sacrament. "In which it appears, that Luther was so far from departing from his opinion, that he plainly says, he could not communicate with those of the Zuinglian persuasion; but he would willingly tolerate them, in hope that in time they might come to communicate together. And as for a political agreement, he does not think the diversity of religion ought to hinder that, no more than it was a bar to marriage or commerce, which may be among those of different religions." And now I have, hope, delivered myself from all the censures to which the wrong publishing of that paper had exposed me. I should next enter into the historical passages of King Edward's reign; but a great discovery, made with relation to the most important foreign transaction that happened both in King Henry and King Edward's reign (I mean the council of Trent, the first session of which was in the former reign, and the second in this), has given me an opportunity of acquainting the world with many extraordinary passages relating to it. There was a large parcel of original letters writ to Granville, then bishop of Arras, afterwards cardinal, and the chief minister of Charles the emperor, that, when he left the Netherlands, were in the hands of some of his secretaries, and were not carried away by him. About fifty years after that, Mr. William Trumball, then King James the First's envoy at Brussels, grandfather to Sir William Trumball (a person eminently distinguished by his learning and zeal for religion, as well as by the embassies and other great employments he has so worthily borne), got these into his hands; no doubt under the promise of absolute secrecy, during the lives of those who had them; since, if they had been then published, it might have been easily traced from whence they must have come; which would have been fatal to those who had parted with them, in a court so bigotted as was that of Albert and Isabella. I have read over the whole series of that worthy gentleman's own letters to King James the First, and saw so much honesty and zeal running. through them all, that, it seems, nothing under some sacred tie could have obliged both father and son to keep such a treasure so secret from all the world, especially Padro Paulo's History coming out at that time in London; to which these letters, as far as they went, which is from the 7th of October 1551, to the last of February 1551-2, would have given an authentic confirmation. I have been trusted by the noble owner with the perusal of them. It is impossible to doubt of their being originals: the subscriptions and seals of most of them are still entire. These were by Sir William deposited in Bishop Stillingfleet's hands, when he was sent to his foreign employments; that such use might be made of them, when he found a person that was master of the Spanish tongue, as the importance of the discovery might deserve. Soon after that, my very worthy friend, Dr. Geddes, returned from Lisbon, after he had been above ten years preacher to the English factory there; and since he is lately dead, I hope I shall be forgiven to take the liberty of saying somewhat concerning him. He was a learned and a wise man. He had a true notion of popery as a political combination, managed by |