VIII CHAP buted and received of all them which receive the said sacrament; and that therefore the said sacraA.D. 1536 ment is to be used with all due reverence and honour, and that every man ought first to prove and examine himself, and religiously to try and search his own conscience, before he shall receive the same; according to the saying of St. Paul, Quisquis ederit panem hunc aut biberit de poculo Domini indigne, reus erit corporis et sanguinis Domini; probet autem seipsum homo, et sic de pane illo edat et de poculo illo bibat ; nam qui edit aut bibit indigne, judicium sibi ipsi manducat et bibit, non dijudicans corpus Domini: that is to say, whosoever eateth this body of Christ unworthily, or drinketh of this blood of Christ unworthily, shall be guilty of the very body and blood of Christ; wherefore let every man first prove himself, and so let him eat of this bread, and drink of this drink. For whosoever eateth it or drinketh it unworthily, he eateth and drinketh it to his own damnation; because he putteth no difference between the very body of Christ and other kinds of meat.” It will be observed that this is a full and firm assertion of the doctrine of the Real Presence as it is, and always has been, held by High Church divines in the Church of England: and that nothing whatever is said about transubstantiation or the annihilation of the natural elements, which was at a later period made the leading feature of their doctrine by the Romanist party. In the "Bishop's Book""The Institution of a Christian Man"-this article is reproduced without any addition whatever: in the "King's Book," on the other hand--" The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of a Christian Man"-there is a long exposition of the doctrine of the Eucharist, in which transubstantiation is practically asserted. VIII [V.] Justification is defined in the fifth article as CHAP "remission of our sins, and our acceptation or reconciliation into the grace and favour of God, that is to A.D. 1536 say, our perfect renovation in Christ:" and it is On Justifideclared to be attained by contrition and faith, joined cation with charity. "The only mercy and grace of the Father, promised freely unto us for His Son's sake, Jesu Christ, and the merits of His blood and passion" being "the only sufficient and worthy causes thereof.” ceremonies Church The remaining five "articles concerning the laud- On the able ceremonies used in the Church, will be found of the noticed at length in the next chapter, and need not be further mentioned here than by a reference to the titles already given. From the preceding summary it will be observed that the clergy were now feeling their way to a sound theological basis for the reformation of doctrine. Existing manuscripts show that a great deal of careful labour was expended on the construction of the articles, and that both sides gave way in some particulars, for the sake of coming to a common standing-ground." the Ten Shortly after they had been printed, the King Injunc issued a set of eight injunctions to the clergy, in the tions respecting second of which they were directed to make the the use of articles known to the laity by declaring them in their Articles sermons. Some printed copies, and the original manuscript, were sent down to the north of England to convince the discontented insurgents there that they were the work of the Church, and not of the King. A royal letter was also sent to each of the bishops on November 19, 1536,8 enjoining them to make the articles more widely known, and prevent 8 Wilkins' Concil., iii. 825. 7 Jenkyns' Cranmer, i. p. 15. VIII CHAP or punish the resistance which was being offered to them in some of their dioceses by both clergy and A. D. 1537 laity. It is evident, therefore, that the King entirely adopted the theological statements thus set forth by Convocation, and endeavoured to enforce them vigorously on the nation. The Institution of a Man The Ten Articles of 1536 were shortly followed Christian up by a book called "THE INSTITUTION OF A CHRISTIAN MAN," which was indeed an expansion of the statements which they contained. It was imitated on a larger scale thirty years afterwards by the Church of Rome, which put forth upon precisely a similar plan the "Catechism of the Council of Trent." But at the time when the "Institution" was published by the Church of England no work of the kind existed, though the germ of such a work had indeed. been extant for ages in the expositions of the Creed, Lord's Prayer, and Ten Commandments, which were habitually given from the pulpits of parish churches." This book was a noble endeavour on the part of Its plan an old one 9 The title "Institution of a Christian Man" may have been taken from a rudimentary tract of Latin verses, consisting of seven pages, and explaining the Creed, the Sacraments, the deadly sins, &c., which Erasmus wrote at the request of Colet for St. Paul's School. It is printed under the title "Christiani Hominis Institutio," in a collection of "Opuscula Moralia," published by Frobenius in 1520, but had probably been often before printed. The word "Institution," as synonymous with "Instruction," was so used down to the last century. At first sight Erasmus would seem to have had a still closer connection with the "Institution" of 1536 for in 1533 was published a work with the following title: "A Plain and Godly Exposition or Declaration of the Common Creed (which in the Latin tongue is called Symbolum Apostolorum) and of the X. Commandments of God's Law, newly made and put forth by the famous Clerk, Master Erasmus of Rotterdam, at the request of the most honourable Lord Thomas, Earl of Wiltshire, Father to the most gracious and virtuous Queen Anne, Wife to our most gracious Sovereign Lord King Henry the VIII. Cum privilegio." It is a larger work than the "Institution" of 1536, and in many respects a very admirable work; but there appears to be no trace of any influence exercised by it on the divines who composed the authoritative volume. the bishops to promote unity, and to instruct the CHAP people in Church doctrine. It was the work-as VIII the preface tells us of a commission appointed by A.D. 1537 the King for the purpose of searching and perusing Holy Scripture, and setting forth a plain and sincere doctrine concerning the whole sum of all those things which appertain unto the profession of a Christian man, that errors and superstitions might be removed, and unity and concord established. The commission consisted of all the bishops, eight archdeacons, and seventeen other doctors of divinity, making forty-six in number altogether.1 the "Institution" The "Institution of a Christian Man" is a volume Contents of which would occupy nearly 200 pages of the work now before the reader's eyes, and consists of a paraphrase and exposition of the Creed and the Lord's CHAP Prayer, with an exposition of the Ten Command- A general consensus of the Bishops divines incorporated with the various portions of the work That so large a work should be written on such subjects, in times of active controversy, and yet in and other such a manner as to be adopted as their own by forty-six learned divines of different schools, is a proof that there was an earnest desire to come to an agreement on matters of religion, and that there were not those irreconcileable differences which have been imagined among the learned clergy so long as the spirit of charity was suffered to actuate them. Cranmer, Lee, Gardiner, Latimer, and Bonner, all agreed to this book, and agreed to it, apparently, with sincerity. The fact is that the spirit of reactionary ultramontanism had not then been imported into English affairs, as it afterwards was by the provocations of Edward VI. and his courtiers; nor had the spirit of Continental Protestantism as yet made its way to any extent among divines. There were differences of opinion, but those differences were not so antagonistic as to be irreconTheir theo- cileable. All could still meet on one common logy that of the Church ground of theological statement, and say, 'This is the doctrine of the Church of England. And, perhaps, |