no reference whatever to the examination of Barrowe, Greenwood, and Penry. We do not know whether Hallam read the whole letter, or whether he read the two noble letters which Whitgift wrote in reply to it. We are certain that Dr. Mackennal has not taken the trouble to read Burghley's letter or Whitgift's letters. Burghley wrote to the Archbishop about the examination of two Nonconformist clergy by 'the Register of London'; he said not a word about the examination of Separatists by Whitgift himself. The letter from Walter Travers, which immediately follows Burghley's letter, is proof enough of the captiousness and intolerance of the Nonconformist demands. Burghley himself apologizes for the tone of his letter by saying at the end of it, 'Your Grace must pardon my hasty writing; for I have done this raptim.' The matter in question was not personal 'examination,' as Dr. Mackennal fancies or pretends; but it was the contents of the twenty-four written 'Articles of Enquiry into Ministers' Conformity. The two Nonconformists were 'contentious and seditious persons, vagrant curates of Cambridge,' and 'two of the most disordered ministers in a whole dioces.' One of them had been 'presented by the sworne-men of his parish for disorders.' Burghley, on slight knowledge of them, had recommended them to Whitgift for preferment. They were sent by the Archbishop to the 'Register [Registrar] of London.' The Registrar gave them the twenty-four Articles. They said 'they were afraid to answer them for fear of captious interpretation,' and complained to their great patron. Burghley asked the Registrar to send the twenty-four Articles to him, and it was after his confessedly hasty perusal of them that he wrote this letter, raptim, to the Archbishop. Whitgift, in his first reply to Burghley, after refuting as absurd the charge made against him of incoraging the Papistes,' says, 'I am crediblie informed that the Papists geve incoragement to these men, and commend them in their doings. Whereof I have also some experiens.' He then asks Burleigh to compare the twenty-four Articles, which your Lordship semith so much to mislike, as written in a Romish stile, smelling of the Romish Inquisition,' &c., with those used in any of the courts of law; and he believes that the Lord Treasurer will then grant 'these Articles to be more tollerable, and better agreeing with the rule of Justice and Charitie than those in other courts. By cause, men are there often tymes examyned at the relation of a private man concerning private crimes, et de propria turpitudine: whereas here men are onelie examyned of their publike actions in their publike calling and ministrie, ་ whereunto they are bownd to answere.' These Articles were 'framed by the best learned in the Lawes,' the Archbishop added, 'who, I dare say, hate both the Romish doctrine and the Romish Inquisition.' 1 We may almost say that in Whitgift's appeal in these two letters to God, 'Who hath called me to this place,' and to the future when al men's hearts shalbe opened and made manifest,' he has anticipated the spiteful libels of these modern perverters of history. The civil tongue of this uncharitable Sect,' he said to Burghley, 'report also that I am revolted, become a Papist, and I know not what. But yt proceadeth from that ungodlie zeale which commith not ex amore, sed ex livore (not of love, but of envy), wherewith they are possessed. And I disdayne to answere to such notorious untruthes, which not the best of them dare avouch to my face.' In a succession of groundless charges made by Dr. Mackennal against Whitgift on the very next page, at the rate of a lie for every line, these ridiculous assertions occur amongst others: (1) The prisoners, not the judges, were on the side of godly learning and piety. (2) Whitgift did not know his Greek Testament. (3) Ignorance of Bible language more than once betrayed the Commissioners into cruel misapprehension of the prisoners' meaning. (4) The moral conduct of the clergy whom the Bishops favoured was often shameless.' If Dr. Mackennal had been industrious and honest enough to read only these two letters, and nothing more from Whitgift's pen, he would have found in them a confutation of all the above falsehoods, and of those which follow on the same page (p. 93). The Archbishop describes the sort of men whom these Marprelatists misrepresent as prodigies of scholarship and piety, exactly as they unconsciously describe themselves in their own writings, which Dr. Mackennal and his colleagues know only through other men's quotations. Meanlie qualified,' said Whitgift, the most of them are'; 'yong in yeares, proud in conceate, contentious in disposition.' He told the Lord Treasurer that, as he was resolved to procure 'the peace of the Church, after so long libertie and lack of discipline,' such men (in spite of their 'publike boastes' of their secret support by powerful statesmen) should not by him be coun 1 The 'twenty-four Articles' are printed in Strype's Appendix, iii. 8187. The Articles were reasonable, catholic, and liberal, and were framed to protect the parochial congregations from the wilful autocracy and individualism of Nonconformist incumbents thrust upon them by the patrons. tenanced against the whole estate of the Clergie of greatest account for learning, stedyness, wisdom, religion, and honestie.' A mere glance at the names of the men whom Whitgift 'favoured' would suffice to confute the slander of the Congregational Union. 'The cheafe care,' said the fearless Primate, 'is committed to me, which I may not neglect, whatsoever come upon me therefor.' The slander that he was one of the Bishops who 'laid up large fortunes' is confuted by his next sentence. 'I never esteem the honour of the place, which is to me gravissimum onus, nor the largeness of the revenues, for the which I am not yet one pennie the richer, nor any other worldlie thing (I thank God) in the respect of the doing of my dutie. Neither do I fear the displeasure of man, nor the tongues of the uncharitable, which cal me Tyrant, Pope, Papist, Knave, and lay to my charge things which I never dyd nor thought upon. "Scio hoc esse opus Diaboli, ut servos Dei mendacio laceret, opinionibus falsis gloriosum nomen infamet, ut qui conscientiæ suæ luce clarescunt, alienis rumoribus sordidentur." So was Cyprian himself used for the same causes, and other godlie Bishops, to whom I am not comparable.' " 1 The impudent statement that 'Whitgift did not know his Greek Testament' is a favourite one with these unlearned pamphleteers. It is repeated even more boldly in Mr. C. S. Horne's boyish essay. He pictures Brown, Barrowe, and even the ignorant Greenwood as giants of critical scholarship, although he shows that he has not read one single line of their writings at first hand. The rise of the Separatist doctrines,' says he, 'was due to a more critical study of the Scriptures. It was the resolute appeal to a true interpretation of the Scriptures that won for early Congregationalism its remarkable triumphs.' But the editors of the Biographia Britannica inform us,' says Mr. Horne, ' that Archbishop Whitgift himself had no acquaintance with Greek; yet Whitgift was a divinity professor at Cambridge' (pp. 26, 27, 46). What made these strange writers go to so strange a source ? And who imposed this illusion upon 'the editors of the Biographia Britannica'? Why did not Dr. Mackennal and Mr. Horne inquire whether it was a fact or a delusion? If they had read Whitgift's letters, they would have found that he not only knew Greek but quoted it, and that he not only quoted it but commented critically upon the Greek text of the New Testament. His suffragan, Bishop Cooper, observes that the 1 S. Cyprian. Epist. lib. iv. 2 The Separatists in the Universities, pp. 25-47. Admonition to the People of England, p. 60. same ignorant sort of men had brought a like charge against Bishop Jewell-that he 'was a man of no deep learning,' and against Erasmus-that he was no divine.' Learning and divinity were with them often nothing more than synonyms for acquaintance with the writings of Calvin and Beza, or even of those inferior Genevan writers in whom, as Hooker says, they put such implicit trust. We suspect that this Dissenting legend was originally evolved out of a saying of the conceited pedagogue, Hugh Broughton, who had undoubtedly a prodigious knowledge of languages, but was full of chronological and other crotchets. Broughton was angry with Whitgift for recommending to the Queen the capable and fearless Bancroft, instead of himself, as the fitter man to be Bishop of London. Upon this he fell to disparaging the Archbishop's learning and extolling his own,' according to a contemporary manuscript cited by Strype,' 'calling it sometimes, in reproach, the Archbishop's Latin studies, and sometimes his Latin and Greek studies only; and praying her Highness to try his learning, assuring her that all his Latin studies would never expound St. Stephen's oration as he (Broughton) himself had done by his skill in sacred chronology by Hebrew learning.' Some of the holiest and greatest bishops of Western Europe could not criticize the Greek Testament, but nevertheless became the Apostles and Fathers of Teutonic Christianity. But Hugh Broughton did not say that Whitgift did not know Greek; for he cites and criticizes Whitgift's Greek! He said that the Latin and Greek which Whitgift knew would not open the Bible to her Majesty' as he, Broughton, 'the defender of her faith,' as he called himself, had done by his new translation from the Hebrew. It is a curious fact that Broughton said the same thing of the most learned man among the Separatists, Henry Ainsworth. He was especially eminent as a Hebrew scholar,' says Dr. Mackennal, and commentator on the Old Testament' (p. 109). He cannot, as an Ebrician or Grecian in learned schools would,' said Broughton, 'grammatically expound one line of either Testament.'2 And again, Broughton wrote to the Independent Sect in 'the Parlour at Amsterdam,' whose 'doctor' Ainsworth was, 'Mr. Ainsworth cannot spell Ebrew: ignorance of the whole alphabet was objected to your Doctor.' If these two gentlemen think Broughton's 2 See Hanbury, i. 155. 1 Whitgift, ii. 230, 390. See The Works of the Great Albionean Divine, renowned in Many Nations, for rare skill in Salems and Athens Tongues, and familiar with all Rabbinical Learning, Mr. Hugh Broughton, fol. MDCLXII. Preface assertion to be false against the Separatist, on what grounds do they persuade themselves that it must be true against the Prelate? We have said enough to demonstrate the uncritical ignorance and incompetence of the most pretentious of the Congregational Union's select historians. We have made no specific reference to the less ambitious essays-' John Robinson,' by Mr. Guinness Rogers; 'Penry, the Welsh Independent,' by Mr. H. E. Lewis; and the 'Pilgrim Fathers,' by the American contributor, Dr. Ray Palmer. No sane person would be so cruel as to expect historical accuracy or sobriety from Mr. Guinness Rogers. A man who seems to spend half his life in speaking upon the agitator's platform, and the other half in writing long letters to the newspapers, cannot possess the time, the habits, and the intellectual character which are necessary for historical research. His singular defect of full and exact acquaintance with the writings of the men whom he intends to glorify has entrapped him. into insulting them. Mr. Rogers hates all the Stuarts, but James I., in whom 'there is no redeeming feature,' says he, most of all. The fulsome eulogy,' says Mr. Rogers, 'which disgraces the dedication to him of the Authorized Version was not excessive to him.' If Mr. Rogers had the slightest firsthand knowledge of the period of which he pretends to know so much, he would tell the young Congregationalists that the Nonconformists and the Separatists were far more 'fulsome' in their adulation of the King than the Bishops were. We could easily produce scores of examples of their flattery; but it will suffice for the time to exhibit a declaration to King James by one of the heroes of these quasihistorians, Henry Jacob, who is said to have been the first who gave the name 'Independent' to the Brownist Separatist. Jacob addressed the King as 'The High and Mighty Prince, James, by the Grace of God, &c., whom we acknowledge to be the Noblest Pillar of the Gospel, and the Greatest Hope for the Propagation and Establishing thereof that is in by J. Lightfoot, pp. 254, 727, 729, 731, &c. Broughton took holy orders at Whitgift's desire, and after the Primate's death eulogised him as 'Leukodorus,' a pun on his surname. In the controversy on 'Hades in the Greek Creed' and on 'Gehenna' between Broughton and the most learned of the Nonconformists, Dr. Rainolds, they asked the Archbishop and Bishop of Aylmer to sit as moderators and umpires. Broughton's reckless incontinence of speech was so recognized by his friends, that the learned Bishop Morton of Durham said to him in 1591, ' I pray you, whatsoever Dolts and Dullards I am to be called, call me so before we begin, that your discourse, and mine attention, be not interrupted.' |