The light kindled in Wycliffe’s days was still burning, if dimly, and the interest in the Scriptures had not died out in England when the Reformation dawned. In the interval, prison and the stake had claimed their victims. The vicious hatred of the Bible on the part of the Romish clergy is a phenomenon which can only be attributed to Satanic influence.
In 1514 a London tradesman named Hun, who was accustomed to read the Bible daily, though he had not separated from the Church, was thrown into the Lollards’ Tower in St. Paul’s, and though no adequate evidence was forthcoming to convict him, the priests, determined not to lose their prey, had him strangled. At the inquest murder was proved, and the murderers confessed but were not punished. Later, Hun’s Bible was discovered; it was a copy of Wycliffe’s translation. His body was therefore dug up by orders of a clerical court and burned as that of a heretic.
Between the accession of Henry VIII in 1509 and the publication of Luther’s Theses, a number of persons died as martyrs for the truth in England. The case of John Brown of Ashford is well-known. Conversing with a priest on a barge traveling down the Thames, he let slip some suspicious remarks, was arrested as a heretic, and after some weeks of cruel treatment was burned to death at Ashford.
The principal agency that God used at this time for the revival of the gospel in England was His own written Word, and He overruled its dissemination, in spite of every obstacle, in a most marvelous way. Erasmus had had printed his revision of the New Testament in Greek, and copies were received at London, Oxford and Cambridge and excited great interest and enthusiasm among scholars. Among them was Thomas Bilney, a student of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Like others, he had sought rest of soul in the empty forms of Rome, but in vain. Reading this, he discovered the priceless words, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief ” (1 Tim. 1:1515This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. (1 Timothy 1:15)). If Christ could save the chief of sinners, thought he, why not me? His bands were loosed; Bilney was saved. He later became a bold evangelist and sealed his testimony in the fire, in the year 1531. His marked Bible is in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
At Oxford there was a student from Gloucestershire, William Tyndale. He, too, studied Erasmus’ New Testament and began to give public lectures on it, but they were not welcome at Oxford, so Tyndale went to Cambridge and joined Bilney and another young man named Fryth. From the Scriptures alone they learned the truth. Tyndale returned to his native country and became a private tutor. He began to spread the truths he had learned. But the hostility of the clergy was too strong. Luther’s works were now entering England and provoking much opposition and persecution. Tyndale realized what a powerful instrument the Scriptures would be if translated into the English tongue and set himself to the task of translation. The atmosphere became too hostile in England, so he went reluctantly to the Continent to complete the work.
Latimer was at Cambridge and bitterly opposed the truth now spreading among the students there. When he took his degree in divinity, he delivered a violent discourse against the teachings of Melancthon. Bilney longed to deliver him from the thrall he was in, and one day begged him to receive his confession. His confession was an account of his own exercises and his conversion. The light penetrated Latimer’s soul, and he was immediately and completely changed. He soon began to proclaim the truth he formerly opposed. Stafford (divinity professor at Cambridge), Barnes (who lectured on the great writers of antiquity, but also on the New Testament), Bilney and Latimer were all sowing the precious seed of the gospel at this time. Meanwhile, Tyndale’s work was completed. Very soon the precious contraband began to arrive from the Continent. A pious curate named Garret hid the Bibles in his house, and thence they found their way, in time, all over England.
We who are so familiar with the Scriptures cannot conceive what it meant in that day to a people who had not known their beauty, who heard the forms of religion uttered in an unknown tongue, to whom God was a hard judge, who saw the clergy, for the most part, living empty, vicious lives — we can hardly grasp what it meant to our forefathers to read, in their own tongue, the living oracles of God and learn the gospel of grace, that God was a giving God, and that salvation was offered to all men in Christ without works, without money and without price.
But Satan stirred up his minions to oppose the spread of the truth. The blow was struck at Oxford. All the friends of the gospel there were thrown into prison. Garret, who had gone thither with copies of Tyndale’s Bible, was also seized. They were thrown into a stinking dungeon and kept there half a year. Gradually they succumbed to the vile conditions and four died. The rest emerged ghosts of their former selves but, through God’s mercy, survived to serve the cause for which they had suffered. Cambridge now became the object of attack. In 1526 Wolsey’s agents arrested Barnes. Under pressure he recanted, but he rose again later.
Meanwhile, New Testaments continued to come in. The Bishop of London purchased a large supply simply to burn them. They were soon replaced by a revised edition. A Dutch printing house, seeing the eager demand, printed five thousand, and these selling quickly, they reprinted them twice more. Tyndale used the money the bishop had paid for the burnt Bibles to print a new and revised edition. England was flooded with Bibles. Great was the dismay of the clergy; great the spread of the truth.
About this time Henry quarreled with the Pope over his divorce with Catherine of Aragon. A previous pope had sanctioned that marriage, though it was contrary to Christian standards, for Catherine had been his brother’s wife. The Pope refused to undo what his predecessor had sanctioned. The universities were appealed to, the first marriage condemned as illegal, and Henry married Anne Boleyn. Matters ended by Henry repudiating the authority of the Pope and making himself the head of the English Church. The monasteries, many of which were hotbeds of vice, were despoiled and suppressed. The power of Rome was broken in England. Cranmer, who was favorable to the truth, became primate and had much influence with the King. It was a strange alliance, but God in His providence overruled it for the protection of the gospel cause.
But if Henry had rejected the Pope, he clung with bigoted attachment to the doctrines of Rome and was as violent a persecutor as the Pope himself. Faithful Tyndale was pursued by his papist enemies and strangled and burned at Antwerp in 1536. His last words were a prayer that God should open the King of England’s eyes. If Henry’s eyes were not opened, God answered Tyndale’s prayer in another way.
Cranmer persuaded the King to approve a translation by Miles Coverdale, and an order was made that a copy should be placed in every parish church in the land. Moreover, much to the annoyance of the Romanists, six copies were chained to desks in St. Paul’s Cathedral for public use. This was in 1538.
“It was wonderful,” wrote the historian Strype, “to see with what joy this book of God was received, not only among the learneder sort, and those that were known lovers of the Reformation, but generally all England over, among all the vulgar and common people, and with what greediness God’s Word was read, and what resort to places where the reading of it was. Everybody that could bought the book or busily read it or got others to read it for them, if they could not read it themselves, and divers more elderly people learned to read on purpose.” Indeed, it has been truly remarked that it was the Word of God itself that was the great instrument of the Reformation in England.
Notwithstanding all this, and despite the fact that the Pope had laid the kingdom under interdict, Henry insisted in 1539 on an Act called the Six Articles in which the chief tenets of Rome were enumerated and in which it was made an offence to question or preach against them. For offence against the first, the doctrine of transubstantiation, the penalty was burning alive; for offence against the others, hanging. Cranmer protested in vain. Latimer and another bishop were imprisoned, besides five hundred other persons. The prisons of London became crowded with victims. Barnes and Garret were burned to death. Two papists suffered a similar fate for denying the King’s supremacy of the Church. Lambert, a London clergyman, appeared before a court over which the King himself presided. He was condemned, and even at the stake suffered exceptional cruelty at the hands of the executioners. Among the last to suffer in this reign was Anne Askew, daughter of a Lincolnshire knight. Accused of denying transubstantiation, she was thrown into prison, where she spent a year. Then she was so cruelly tortured on the rack that she all but died and had to be carried on a chair to the stake. There, opposite St. Bartholomew’s Church, Smithfield, with three other confessors and in the presence of a great crowd, certain of the nobility of the realm occupying a privileged position in front of the church, they burned her alive. Of such crimes is the human heart capable, even though addicted to a religion which professed to be Christian. No outward form can make man other than he is — a fallen creature, unless and until he is transformed by divine grace.
Henry VIII himself died soon after. In the amazing providence of God, his only son Edward, by Jane Seymour, a boy of surprising virtue and attainments despite his tender years, succeeded to the Crown. He was then in his tenth year. The Earl of Hertford became Protector. Cranmer is said to have wept for joy. He himself became a member of the council of regency. All seemed set fair for the prosperity of the gospel. At his coronation, observing the three swords of State carried before him, the young king called for another—the Bible, the sword of the Spirit — saying, “He that rules without it is not to be called God’s minister or a king.” The Bible was brought and carried reverently in the procession.
A commission was appointed, within a month, to report on the moral and spiritual condition of the clergy and people throughout the land. In spite of Romish protests, a book of homilies was printed and circulated in which, among other doctrines, justification by faith was clearly set forth. These were appointed to be read from the pulpit in every church. An order was also issued for the removal of images from the churches. Then appeared Cranmer’s catechism. A still further advance followed. “Ye are a priesthood,” said Cranmer to the people, “and must worship with your own hearts and voices.” The mass was changed into a communion service and was to be held in English, not Latin. A prayer book and liturgy were compiled. In the Romish Church, hitherto, there had been no real singing. Chants, dirges and wails in Latin and in which the people rarely took part — a mechanical and heartless religious form — had for long replaced the worship of God in spirit and in truth. The Lollards had been marked by singing as their name implies, as well as the Huguenots, and a revival of sacred song accompanied the Reformation in Germany. Now singing by the people in their own tongue became an authorized practice. At first it was the Psalms which were converted to metrical form for the purpose. It was at this time that the thirty-nine articles of the Church of England originated. Forty-two in number when first published in 1552, they were reduced to thirty-nine in 1562.
The papists plotted against the Protector who had faithfully served both the King and the Reformation. The Duke of Northumberland accused him of a design to instigate a rebellion. He was tried and condemned. The young king, still in his teens, signed his death warrant with tears in his eyes. The Earl was executed in January 1552. At this time arose the objection to vestments and other ceremonial forms in which Bishop Hooper was prominent.
Edward VI died in 1553, being about sixteen years of age. Darkness was once again to descend on England, and many faithful were to be tried in the fire and become victorious. Queen Mary at first hid her real intentions and promised toleration for all, but once firmly on the throne, she appeared in her true colors. The country was again made subservient to the Pope, whose legate was received at the court. All the reforms of Edward’s reign were reversed as quickly as possible. Now began a fierce persecution. To terrify the population, the burnings of heretics were spread over the kingdom. John Rogers, prebend of St. Paul’s, was the first to go to the stake. On his way to the stake, he was met by his wife and eleven children, one still an infant in arms. His crime was that he had persisted in preaching the gospel. Who can say what it cost him to leave his wife and family and suffer the cruel agony of death by fire? Just before the fire was lighted, a pardon was offered him if he would recant. Having declined this, the fire was lighted; he endured the torments with invincible faith and died with his hands uplifted to heaven.
Laurence Saunders was sent to the town of Coventry in which he had labored. On reaching the stake, he embraced it with the words: “Welcome the cross of Christ; welcome the life everlasting!” Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, followed. It was market day in Gloucester. A crowd of seven thousand gathered. As he arrived at the stake, a box was placed before him, containing a pardon if he would recant. But he would not buy his life at such a cost. The fire burned slowly. It was a long and painful death, awful to behold. Finally his spirit was released from his tortured body. His dying words, like the first of the martyrs, were, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Dr. Taylor, one of Cranmer’s chaplains, was burned at Hadleigh, Suffolk. Ferrar, Bishop of St. David’s, suffered in the same way at Carmarthen.
“All over England, from the eastern counties to Wales on the west and from the midland shires to the shores of the English Channel, blazed these baleful fires. Both sexes and all ages and conditions — the boy of eight and the man of eighty — the halt and the blind — were dragged to the stake and burned, sometimes singly and at other times in dozens.”
Among these martyrdoms three stand out, well-known to all acquainted with English history — those of Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer. Ridley and Latimer were bound to one stake at Oxford, at a spot near Balliol College. As the fire was lighted, Latimer addressed those historic words to his companion: “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as, I trust, shall never be put out.” Latimer, who was 85 years old, soon expired. Ridley’s sufferings were more prolonged.
Cranmer was reserved to the following year. The papists succeeded in extracting from him a recantation. On March 21, 1556, he was led out of prison. In spite of his recantation, which he was to make in public, the stake and the wood were waiting. He was exhorted to make a public confession. “I will do it,” he said. Thereupon he declared his abhorrence of Romish doctrines and his steadfast adherence to the faith of the gospel. Then he revoked his recantation, adding, “Forasmuch as my hand offended, writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished therefore: for may I come to the fire, it shall be first burned.” As he had said, so he did. He remained unmoved in the fire, uttering, as so many of his fellow-martyrs had done, those words of faith, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
Between 1555, when the first of these fires was lighted, and 1558, when five martyrs were burned in one fire at Canterbury, only two days before Mary’s death, 280 persons were sent to the stake. In addition, many died in prison or under torture or by starvation. The people of England were sickened by this horrible cruelty, and it was with undisguised relief that the news of Mary’s death was received on November 17, 1558, and Elizabeth proclaimed queen. Once again, the Pope’s authority was abolished, and the Protestant form of worship was restored. The first Book of Homilies, published in the reign of Edward VI, was reissued, and the second, hitherto unpublished, was added. These homilies had been prepared by Cranmer, Latimer and others. To this was added the Apology of Jewell and his Defence. Jewell himself and many of the exiled preachers returned. The Marian bishops resigned and took pensions. They were not hurried to the stake or imprisoned as Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley and others had been in the late queen’s reign. Of the ninety-four hundred parochial clergy, only about eighty resigned. The rest just conformed. These were, of course, a source of weakness, as many were Romanists at heart. But the gospel was now free, and the Word of God, which alone is effective to turn men from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, was now free.
Rome’s reaction was delayed for some years, but at last in 1570 the Pope issued his bull in which he declared Queen Elizabeth to be deprived of her pretended title to the kingdom and commanded all her subjects to withdraw their allegiance from her, while he struck with anathema all who did not do so. The Pope thus declared war on the Queen of England and called upon her subjects to rebel. Assassins entered the country to remove, if possible, those who stood in the way. A plot was hatched in 1586 to assassinate the queen, to start an insurrection, and to set Mary Stuart on the throne. While political affairs do not directly concern this history, these facts show the true character of Rome. It has often been said that Roman Catholics suffered as martyrs in Elizabeth’s reign. The fact is they suffered for treason. Men such as Gardiner and Bonner, who were mainly responsible for the burning of the martyrs in Mary’s reign, lived unmolested all their days.
Among the decrees of the Council of Trent was one which enjoined upon all Catholic princes the destruction of Protestantism. Philip II of Spain, whose terrible persecutions had decimated the Netherlands, now planned to bring England again under the papal yoke and add it to his wide dominions. The vast Armada he had prepared at untold cost for this bold enterprise set sail in May 1588. Forces under the Duke of Parma in Holland were to cooperate. By all human calculations Britain was doomed. But there is hardly an event in history which more clearly signalizes the overruling of divine providence than the destruction of the invincible Armada. Disappointed by the non-arrival of Parma’s force, disorganized and damaged by the English fireships let loose in the Straits of Dover, and harried by the small British ships, the Armada sailed northward and, driven before the storms, was battered to pieces on the rocks of the Scottish and Irish coasts. Only a forlorn remnant returned to Spain. Those who lived in those days, not only in England but in other lands, saw in it a deliverance no less notable than the destruction of Pharaoh’s hosts in the Red Sea. Had the invasion succeeded, the dark night of papal dominion would have fallen once again upon Europe.