sealed with the mark of the beast and with cankered con- What were his principles respecting the Sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist may be judged from the foregoing quotations; as to Confirmation and other rites of the Church it is enough to say that he spoke of the laying on of hands as a perfectly unnecessary ceremony, and of anointing with the sign of the Cross as "the bishop buttering the child in the forehead." This will be recognised by all who are familiar with Puritan writings as the ordinary style of their controversial theology, and Tyndale may be looked upon as its originator. The marvel is that such a man could ever have been supposed to represent the principles of the Church of England, or to be a martyr for the sake of her reformation.8 That his writings had great influence and were widely circulated there cannot be a doubt. They established a form of "religious opinion" among the rising middle class, who were socially 7 Tyndale's Doctrinal Treatises, Parker Soc. ed., pp. 254-259. • Ibid., p. 277. CHAP ΧΙ CHAP opposed to the clergy, and being very imperfectly educated, were easily seduced by the racy English of a Reformation Cobbett: and the form of religious opinion so established has been the atmosphere in which all subsequent plantations of unbelief have spread abroad their branches, and lustily thriven in their unfruitful leafiness. Low social position of Dissenters The social status of the early anti-Church party the early is indicated by Tyndale's contrast of a cobbler with a cardinal, a butcher with a bishop, and a baker with our holy father the Pope; which is very much confirmed by the narratives of Foxe, whose "martyrs are mostly of a low social class and it may be remarked that the classes thus indicated are not placed in a high light as to morals, intelligence, or piety by Shakespeare. They seemed to have been especially unsavoury to the nostrils of the bishops so long ago as 1529, for these said in their reply to the charges of the House of Commons, "Truth it is that certain apostates, friars, monks, lewd priests, bankrupt merchants, vagabonds, and lewd, idle fellows of corrupt intent, have embraced the abominable and erroneous opinions lately sprung in Germany :" and certainly, as far as one can judge, it does seem as if the ranks of those who "believed not" had been largely recruited from "certain lewd fellows of the baser sort" taken out of several classes. But the dissenting faction was to be made still more repulsive to the Importa conservative and gentle part of society by the inroad Anabap of Anabaptists from abroad, driven thence by the A.D. 1534 severities which their rebellion and folly had brought upon them. tion of tists These foreign Anabaptists were the fathers of XI the modern English Baptists. They had been CHAP driven out of Lutheran Saxony, and put under the ban of capital punishment in Calvinistic Zurich; A.D. 1534 but were rehabilitated for a time in Northern Germany under the leadership of John Bockhold, better known as John of Leyden. In 1533 this absurd and savage infidel organized a large body of insurgents at Munster, with the object of sacking that city and taking possession of Amsterdam and other places of importance. The religion of this new prophet and his followers consisted chiefly in anathematizing the Church, running naked in a state of frenzy about the streets, and marrying a number of wives instead of one only. There was nothing to be done with these primitive Baptists but to put them down; and this Charles V. did with a stern and merciless hand that left no room for them in the Netherlands, or in any other part of his dominions. Those who were neither burned nor hanged fled to the universal asylum of all unsuccessful revolutionists, and being somewhat toned down in the course of their transportation were not so outrageously extravagant when they settled in England but that they could find sympathizers among the anti-Church party. These "Anabaptist strangers" are first distinctly noticed in a proclamation of 1534' when they were already beginning to give trouble. In this pro clamation it is stated that many strangers are come into this realm who, although they were baptized in their infancy, yet have, in contempt of the Holy Sacrament of Baptism, " rebaptized themselves." They also deny the reality of Christ's presence in 1 Wilkins' Concil., iii. 779. ΧΙ tists burned CHAP the Holy Sacrament of the altar, and are guilty of other pestiferous heresies. They are ordered to deA.D. 1535 part out of the realm in twelve days, under pain of death. But to depart was as dangerous as to stay; and some at least remained, for in the same year Cromwell's famous pocket-book has the memorandum, “First, touching the Anabaptists, and what the King will do with them." Stowe says, in his Anabap Chronicle, that nineteen men and six women, born in Holland, were examined in St. Paul's, on May 25, 1535, and that fourteen were condemned, of whom a man and a woman were burned in Smithfield, and the other twelve sent for execution to other towns. These were probably the persons respecting whom Cromwell had made his memor ̄ndum: and considering the cruel custom of the age one cannot wonder that persons so utterly heretical should have been condemned, however much the cruelty of the law may be lamented. A. D. 1538 Fresh immigrations of the sect took place, however, and they again became so troublesome that a commission was issued to Archbishop Cranmer and others, on October 1, 1538, in which their principles are described as pestiferous and heretical, and in which the Archbishop and the other bishops are enjoined to take stringent measures for their suppression. This resulted in a set of Injunctions which were issued in 1539, restraining the importation of books, condemning the tenets of the Ana 2 Ellis' Orig. Lett., II. ii. 120. He gives their opinions; [1.] That Christ was only God. [2.] That he did not take flesh and blood of the Virgin Mary. [3.] That children of persons not Christian may be saved. [4.] That Bap tism of infants is useless. [5.] That the Sacrament of Christ's Body is only bread. [6.] That none can be saved who sin after Baptism. Stowe, p. 571. Wilkins' Concil., iii. 836. XI baptists, and forbidding disputations about the CHAP Blessed Sacrament or unauthorized abolition of ceremonies. Some of the Anabaptists were made A.D. 1540 to bear faggots in token of recantation, and on April 29, 1540, there appear to have been some more of these unhappy people burned. It is these latter, probably, of whom Latimer spoke in a sermon preached before Edward VI. :— "The Anabaptists," he says, " that were burnt here in divers towns in England (as I heard of credible men, I saw them not myself) went to their death even intrepide, as ye will say, without any fear in the world, cheerfully. Well, let them go. There was in the old doctors' times another kind of poisoned heretics, that were called Donatists; and these heretics went to their execution, as though they should have gone to some jolly recreation or banquet, to some belly cheer or a play. And will ye argue then, he goeth to his death boldly or cheerfully, ergo, he dieth in a just cause? Nay, that sequel followeth no more than this, 'a man seems to be afraid of death, ergo, he dieth evil.' And yet our Saviour Christ was afraid of death Himself. I warn you, therefore, and charge you, not to judge them that be in authority, but to pray for them." dangerous In the beginning of the same sermon Latimer Their speaks of "a certain sect of heretics that will have tenets no magistrates or judges on the earth," five of whom he has heard of in one town; and it is evidently the Anabaptists that he is here also referring to. They were, in fact, becoming very dangerous by the contagious rapidity with which their socialist and infidel principles spread among the lower classes, 5 Wilkins' Concil., iii. 847. Stowe, p. 579. Yet at the end of a proclamation about ceremonies Issued in 1538, a general pardon was given to all Anabaptists and other religious offenders up to February 7 Latimer's Sermons, i. 144, ed. 1824. |