PROTESTANTS TO BE MENTIONED WITH PITY. 193 that he would have made the Church he defended and supported very different, at the end of his reign, from the Church he defended and supported, at its com mencement. 2. The second period of the "poisoning system," when the Queen commenced her efforts to restore the antient ritual by influence, and not by law, occupied also so short a time that we have but little to record of Bonner. The Bishop, we may be assured, like a loyal subject, lost no opportunity of promoting the wishes of his Sovereign, and extending his own pious opinions. Parsons recommends that all who have this same object in view should abuse the Reformers, especially Jewell,* which both my beloved exemplar, and perpetual friend Froude has done,† and which I also have no less incessantly done, especially in my favorite number. Parsons advises the establishment of a Council of Reformation, which shall be constantly watchful over the business of education, and particularly endeavor to obtain influence over the minds of young men at the University. He recommends the treating with apparent indifference and contempt, all the Ultra-Protestants as schismatics and heretics. Our favorite Saint, Cardinal Borromeo, always advised his clergy to speak of them in the same manner, as poor wretches; not to attempt to take off their arguments lest perchance their hearers might be perverted; but *Parsons' Memorial, p. 42. 194 JAMES II. WOULD HAVE IMPROVED THE CHURCH. to speak of them uniformly with contempt and pity.* All this advice we have followed to the letter. Our union of brethren at Oxford, the Committee who have joined with me in publishing our influential Tracts, have been called a conspiracy; and we rejoice in the contumely which proves, in these evil days, our orthodoxy, against the Ultra-Protestants. No less did our beloved Sovereign James the Second, before the "sin of 1688" separated him from the Church he would have improved, and from the people who were so ungratefully blind to his patriotic zeal to convert them, endeavour, by influence, to change the religion of his Ultra-Protestant subjects. He could not alter the law, and he therefore dispensed with it. The Court of High Commission, the closetings with his officers, the bestowal of rewards and honors on those who supported his measures, the attempt to place among our Fellows at Magdalen and in other offices of the University, persons who had conformed to the services of the old Catholic ritual; and who preferred the first temple to the second temple of Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer, and Edward the Sixth, are too well known to be repeated here. All, however, was conducted on the "poisoning system." Mary, also, and with her the beloved of her soul, our favourite Bonner, for a very short space adopted this part of our system. It was not necessary, indeed, to do so for any length of time, because * In universum dicant miseros esse hereticos, &c., ap. Turner ut sup., p. 464. MARY GOVERNS AT FIRST BY INFLUENCE. 195 the Parliament met in October on the 5th or 10th,* and razed at once to the ground that fabric of the second temple which Edward and Cranmer had raised; but which was rebuilt by Elizabeth, and which still flourishes among us. Yet before the law was altered the Queen had used her influence in the most unsparing manner. Licenses to preach were granted by Gardiner. Cranmer was imprisoned for boldly acknowledging the authorship of a paper on the Mass. The pestiferous foreigners, who had been the cause of so much mischief to our Prayer Book, were commanded to leave the kingdom. The coronation took place on the 10th of October, and two Bishops, who refused to attend the Mass which was performed, were expelled from the house. The Court openly interfered at the elections to procure the return of burgesses and knights who should repeal the laws of Edward concerning religion. Consultations were held at Rome, after the commissioners had been sent to the Pope from Mary, on the best method of restoring the first temple again in England; and the resolution of the Queen to restore what the Duke of Northumberland had called, on the scaffold, the antient faith, became so evident, that the Ultra-Protestants began, as the result too soon proved, to prepare for rebellion or exile, submission or punishment. So ended the second stage of the poisoning system, *See Strype, compared with Foxe. + Burnet, Reformation, part 2, vol. 2, p. 247. 196 BONNER UNDER THE THIRD STAGE OF THE SYSTEM. in which I find nothing recorded of Bonner which the most zealous of my Ultra-Protestant antagonists will venture to condemn. 3.—We are brought, then, to the third stage of the Froudian, or "poisoning system," by which the religion of a country is to be altered: the change to be effected by the public law. In England this can only be done by the Parliament. The first attempts of Mary to accomplish the alteration of religion in England by means of the public law, before she endeavoured to effect a reconciliation with Rome, which is the fourth stage of the poisoning system, may be said to have continued from October, 1553, when they first assembled; till St. Andrew's-Day of the year following, which was called the feast of the reconciliation. Our favourite Bishop, Bonner, was actively employed through the whole of this period, though the more peculiar severities which we always endeavour to keep in the back ground as much as possible, had not begun. My defence of Bishop Bonner, through this period, will rest entirely on his obedience to the public law. If any blame is to be affixed to the efforts which we shall make to rebuild the first Temple, that blame must rest on the altered law, and not on Bishop Bonner. Here, also, I must pause, to consider the progress which we, and the other enemies of Ultra-Protestantism have already made, and the prospects which we may have of ultimate success. By carefully expressing our hatred of what the POPERY TO BE ALWAYS ABUSED BY TRACTARIANS. 197 Ultra-Protestants call Popery, while we advocate the pious opinions, which are held by the members of the Church of Rome, we are beginning to accomplish the very important object of persuading the congregations of the younger clergy and of ourselves, that to invocate the Saints, is not Popery-to esteem Hildebrand, Becket, and Innocent, as Saints and Martyrs of the Most High, is not Popery-to pray for the dead—to uphold a real sacrifice in the Eucharist, and to maintain that God has granted to his Priests the power both to "make the body and blood of Christ" -to teach and to preach these things-and then to exclude from the communion of the body and blood of Christ, every believer in the religion of the New Testament, who does not receive them—are not Popery; and we are evidently preparing the way, therefore, for the reception of our own degree of proposed change. This change we must never allow to be Popery-till the time comes when we may acknowledge that "a rose by any name would smell as sweet." We can only hope to change the public law in England, by first changing the public opinion of England. The public law among us is the result of the joint influence of the Royal will, and the popular pleasure. In the present instance, the former is dependant on the latter; so that if we can induce the now prejudiced and bigoted people to adopt our opinions, we shall necessarily restore the throne, to the holder of the offerings of prayers for the dead, and to the |