BONNER'S PRINciples those OF MY 90TH TRACT. 103

Bonner. He was ordered, for instance, to take care—that no minister do counterfeit the Popish Mass (then follows a list of the antient ceremonies, which the Clergy had been accustomed to use, and which they were now commanded to avoid)—that none maintain purgatory, invocation of Saints, the Six Articles, relics, lights, palms, ashes, candles, Christ's altars, or other such abuses and superstitions.* Bonner, that is, was ordered, contrary to the convictions of his conscience as a Bishop, to exert himself more strenuously to remove the observances which he approved. His enemies were not contented with his silent tranquil obedience to the laws he had opposed, as soon as those laws were passed. They required him to punish the men, whose only fault was, that they endeavoured, with my friends in our ninetieth Tract for the Times, to reconcile obedience to the laws of the English Church, with adherence to the opinions and practices which that Church was expressly established to destroy. This Bonner did. This they do. Both are equally right; and both, therefore, are disliked by the Cranmerian and Ultra-Protestant party, for attempting to reconcile the two. They are unjustly alleged to be putting new wine into old bottles, and sewing the new piece on the old garment. We shall not, however, be diverted from

our course.

We shall follow the example of Bishop

* Burnet, vol. 2, part 2, b. i., Records 165.

104

THE SUCCESS OF TRACTARIANISM CERTAIN.

Bonner. We shall protest and submit. We shall object and be patient. We shall be insulted yet persevere. The change is going on. In "quietness and confidence is our strength." We shall still proceed on what my dear friend Froude calls "the poisoning system." We shall go on in the mist, till what the Ultra-Protestants would call the evil spirit, is found near the tree of life. We hope to become as the dry rot in the beams of the Ultra-Protestant Tabernacle in the wilderness of the dreary Reformation, till the rotted timbers fall, and a second Reformation be begun and completed by the "Tractarian British Critics.” The people of the Church of England will eventually only be guided by us. Young enthusiasts, aged theologians, Churton and Hook, Perceval and Keble, Palmer and Todd, Pusey and Oakley, Newman and Froude, are with us. Our system is working its way, though not in secret, yet so subtly and impalpably, as hardly to admit of precaution or encounter.* It has been the fashion, and in spite of

*British Critic, No. 50, p. 402. I must, however, confess that I have doubted since that number was written, whether all these, especially Dr. Hook, agree with me in every point. This latter gentleman has published Lectures on Passion Week, professedly taken from Mr. Townsend's work on the New Testa ment. This is enough to ruin Dr. Hook in the estimation of all sound Tractarians, for Mr. Townsend has openly defied us, and was the first, I believe, of the Dignitaries of the Church who addressed a charge to his few clergy against us and our proceedings, at the very beginning of our useful and splendid

career.

THE CHURCH OF ROME OUR MOTHER.

105

Mr. Townsend it is going out of season, to accuse the agents in the present Revolution of being simple Dominies. We will prove to them before we have done with them that-but I must be prudent; for I remember the advice of my friend Froude, and I will not startle the Anglican Churchman with any premature announcement of the extent to which I would take him back to "the Saviour's holy home."

The mentioning of this epithet, as applied by one of our dear friends to the Church of Rome, (which I have elsewhere called our dear sister in the Faith, nay our mother to whom, by the Grace of God, we owe it that we are what we are: may we never be provoked to forget her, or cease to love her, even though she frown upon us,)† reminds me of a circumstance which occurred about this time, and which makes me, with my friend Froude, hate these Reformers more and more. The new Liturgy was to come into use on Whit-Sunday. This was on the 14th of May, for Easter-Day fell in the year 1549 on the 26th of March. In the preceding year, Joan Boucher had been condemned for heresy, but had been detained in prison in hopes of her conversion.§ This heretic was now brought to the stake and burnt

* I have expressed my opinion of this clergyman in the British Critic, No. 50, p. 407.

+ British Critic, No. 59, p. 3.

Burnet Reform., part 2, b. i., p. 103, folio edit., 1680.

§ King Edward's Journal, ap. Records, p. 2, Burnet, ut supra.

106 THE TRUE REASON FOR BURNING JOAN BOUCHER.

on the 2nd of May, 1549, in Smithfield. It is generally believed that this murderous execution took place to intimidate the strangers and foreigners who came into England at this time from the Continent,* and who entertained similar opinions with herself. I believe, however, that Joan Boucher was now burned to intimidate all who might be hesitating whether, at the end of the fortnight which elapsed from the time of her execution, they should use the new Liturgy : and I believe further, though it has escaped even the vigilant eye of my Anti-Protestant friends, that Cranmer, on this account alone, urged, entreated, and pressed the young King against his own better, though youthful, and even private judgment, to sign the death warrant. It is well known that Edward long hesitated to obey the chief Bishop of his own Church, who, as such, was "our Saviour's representative." He actually thought it cruelty, to use the lauguage of Burnet, like that which they had condemned in Papists, to burn any for their consciences; and his conversation with Sir John Cheek on the subject, confirmed him in this opinion. Cranmer, however, or the Protestant Church, in his person, persuaded him to sign the death warrant. He assured the King that for such heresies as that of which this poor wretch was guilty-for such "embodied evils" as Joan Boucher, the punishment of death was just. "You

* Burnet, p. 3.

+ Page 3, ut supra.

CRANMER THE AUTHOr of her death.

107

shall answer for it to God, if you have taught me wrongly," said the young Prince, when he yielded, silenced but not convinced, and signed the fatal warrant. Well might the "weak, wavering, Cranmer" be struck, as Burnet relates, with horror. Was it not prophetic horror? Well might he direct that the half maniac be taken to his own house, that he might persuade her to recant. Well might the people be horrified to find that, though they had generally believed "that all the statutes for burning heretics had been repealed: now when the thing was better considered, it was found that the burning of heretics was done by the common law, so that the statutes made about it were only for making the conviction more easy; and the repealing the statutes did not take away that which was grounded on a writ at common law."* The precedent which should consign the Archbishop to the stake was now set, when the same united ecclesiastical and civil authority, which declared the opinions of Joan Boucher to be heresy, pronouncing in a short time, the same law, from other lips, declared the opinions of Thomas Cranmer to be heresy. Joan Boucher was burnt in the name of the Church. "We," says the writ under the authority of which she was burnt," We, Thomas, Archbishop of Can"terbury by Divine Providence, and Metropolitan "of all England, Hugh Latimer, Doctor of Divinity, "William Cooke, Dean of the Arches, and others,'

* Burnet, part 2, book i., p. 112.