PRUDENCE THAT WAS FOOLISH; OR, PLAYING THE TRAITOR TO TRUTH
"Although they were not understood,
Yet from their spirit and their blood
Did flow a fair and fertile flood
Of thoughts and deeds both great and good.”
—THOMAS JORDAN
“Henceforth I will speak to you of Christ only, I will write to you of Christ; by my words and by my letters will I imprint Christ upon your minds, doing this one thing especially, and for the sake of that doctrine refraining from propounding to you any other."
—HERBERT DE LOSINGA (A.D. 1119).
“I am quite sure that I would never gratuitously court odium or controversy, but I must beware also of too much dreading it." Dr. ARNOLD.
A.D. 1531-1535.
WEAK BUT WORKING BOLD— WORDS— ST. PAUL DOING PENANCE AT ST. PAUL'S CROSS HEARING A PEN WALKING— HUMILIATING DENIAL— THE DANCING MONK WHO DANCED TO HIS DEATH.
LATIMER found that in retiring to West Kington he had assumed quite sufficient responsibility to occupy his time and thoughts. He tells us that " he often wondered, when so much was to be done in a small cure,' how men could go quietly to bed who had great cures and many, and yet peradventure were in none of them at all.'”
The village or hamlet of West Kington is situated about fourteen miles from Bristol, and upon the borders of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. It is a kind of out-of-the-world place still, and, of course, in Latimer's time it was more so. The Bishop of the diocese at that time was the Italian Cardinal Campeggio, who, of course, was non-resident. With his vicar-general, Richard Hiley by name, Latimer was destined afterward to come into conflict. In the little village some memorials of the great Reformer still exist. The pulpit in which he preached is jealously preserved, and a stained-glass window has been erected in the tiny church to his memory. "In the walk at the Parsonage-house is a little scrubbed hollow oak, called Latimer's oak, where he used to sit.”
In the West of England there had always been an undercurrent of so-called heresy which strangely coexisted together with very much superstition. The famous Roman causeway called the Foss Way ran near the Rectory, and thence through Gloucester and Warwick it led past Thurcastone, the home of Latimer's childhood, on to Lincoln. And it has also been pointed put by Demaus, (who is the great authority for all the facts connected with Latimer's life,) that at the time of the Reformer's incumbency the lord of the manor at West Kington was the Marquis of Dorset, who was also lord of Thurcastone. Out of the world, but still linked to it by these ties, Latimer was deeply moved by the superstition which he saw around him. "I dwell within half a mile of the Foss Way," he writes, "and you would wonder to see how they come by flocks out of the West Country to many images, but chiefly to the blood of Hales. And they believe verily that it is the very blood that was in Christ's body, shed upon Mount Calvary for our salvation, and that the sight of it with their bodily eye doth put them out of doubt that they be in clean life and in a state of salvation, without spot of sin, which doth Bolden them to many things. You would wonder if you should commune with them, both coming and going, what faiths they have; for, as for forgiving their enemies and reconciling their Christian brethren, they cannot away withal, for the sight of that blood doth requite them for the time.”
The Reformer was troubled "with headache, pleurisy, colic, and stone," and far from strong, but he could not resist the appeal to his sympathy, which he felt the ignorance of the people to be. He preached not only in his own cure, but also wherever he could obtain a hearing, and his itinerancy extended as far even as to Kent. Not, however, without bitter opposition on the part of his neighbors, one of whom ventured unadvisedly to write to him about what he styled Latimer's "un-Christian sermons or mad satires." A prompt reply from Latimer compelled this antagonist to retire from the field somewhat less confidently than he had entered the lists. About midsummer of 1531 the preacher was in greater danger, for while on a visit to London, Latimer was persuaded to preach in St. Mary Abchurch. Latimer did so somewhat reluctantly, for he well knew the hatred that Stokesley, the Bishop of London, felt towards him and all others who held the Reformed faith. Indeed, he more than half suspected that the invitation to preach was a trap which had been laid for him "to the intent that Stokesley, or some other pertaining to him, should have been there to take him in his sermon." Having accepted the invitation, with all its peril, Latimer was not the man to shrink from the risks that he ran. "If my Lord of London would have listened to St. Paul declaring his own opinion of his own words," said Latimer, "then he should have escaped and his accusers should have been rebuked." With biting irony the preacher continued: "But if the Bishop had given sentence according to the representation of the accusers, then good St. Paul must have borne a fagot at his back, even as St. Paul's Cross, my Lord of London, Bishop of the same, sitting under the Cross. Oh! it had been a goodly sight to have seen St. Paul thus!”
The sermon was all the more stinging because the Bishop, together with More, the new Chancellor, had just brought Bilney to the stake. After having thrice denied the faith, Bilney had at last summoned up sufficient courage to witness for Christ, and on the 19th of August 1531 he had been burned to death at Norwich. Other victims had been offered up by the Bishop and Thomas More, of whom it has been said that he was "the ideal of the Catholicism of this period. He had, like the Roman system, two poles worldliness and asceticism; which, although contrary, often meet together. In fact, asceticism makes a sacrifice of self only to preserve it; just as a traveler attacked by robbers will readily give up a portion of his treasures to save the rest. This was the case with More;" and in that spirit he was a persecutor. Happily for Latimer, the King refused to listen to the accusations of either More or of the Bishop, and the Reformer returned to his village cure unharmed. The sleepless malice of the Bishop followed Latimer even into the retirement of West Kington, and sought to destroy him there. Richard Hiley, the Vicar-General of the diocese, was employed as a tool in order to entrap Latimer to his death. To Richard Hiley, Stokesley wrote requiring him to send Latimer to London in order to be tried before the Bishop. Latimer's patron, Sir Edward Baynton, who was also a personal friend of the King, accompanied the Rector to the Vice-Chancellor. Latimer refused to go to London, and Hiley professed himself to be satisfied with the explanations of his doctrine that he gave. Latimer, however, too well knew the implacable nature of his enemy to consider the danger as past, and on the January of the following year he was not surprised when he was summoned to London in order to answer for his heresy before Stokesley. On the 29th of January 1532 he appeared before the Bishop, and was examined in order that he might be entrapped into some admission that might be used against him. As yet Latimer had not abandoned any of the Roman dogmas; he had, indeed, merely exposed the vices and corruptions of the system, as many others had done before him. His relentless enemies trusted, however, by some means or other to entangle him in his talk, and thus to secure his condemnation. He himself tells us of this period: "Once I was in examination before five or six Bishops where I had much turmoil. Every week twice I came for examination, and many snares and traps were laid to get something. At the last I was brought forth to be examined into a chamber hanged with arras, where I was before wont to be examined. But now at this time the chamber was somewhat altered, for whereas before there was wont ever to be a fire in the chimney, now the fire was taken away, and an arras-hanging hanged over the chimney, and the table stood near the chimney's end, so that I stood between the table and the chimney's end. There was among those Bishops that examined me one with whom I had been very familiar, and took him for my great friend, an aged man, and he sat next the table end. Then among all other questions he put forth one, a very subtle and crafty one, and such one, indeed, as I could not think so great danger in. And when I should make answer, ' I pray you, Master Latimer,' said he, speak out; I am very thick of hearing, and here be many that sit far off.' I marveled at this that I was bidden speak out, and began to misdeem, and gave an ear to the chimney, and there I heard a pen walking in the chimney, behind the cloth. They had appointed one there to write all my answers, for they made sure work that I should not start from them. The question was this: Master Latimer, do you not think on your conscience that you have been suspected of heresy? ' A subtle question— a very subtle question. There was no holding of peace would serve. To hold my peace had been to grant myself faulty. To answer was every way full of danger. But God, which always hath given me answer, helped me, or else I should never have escaped it, and delivered me from their hands.”
It was indeed a dangerous position in which Latimer was thus placed, for Henry prided himself that in defying the Pope he still remained orthodox, and in spite of his liking for Latimer, the King would have handed him over at once to his enemies; nor is it known how it was that Latimer escaped. A still greater danger awaited him, for on the 11th of March 1532 Latimer was summoned before Convocation, and required to sign certain articles which were then submitted to him. Three times he refused compliance with this demand, and was thereupon excommunicated and sent to prison. After ten days' confinement he was once more brought to the bar, and then he weakly consented to sign two out of the fourteen articles which had been before presented to him. In these he assented "that Lent and other fasts should be observed," and that "the crucifix and other images of saints should be kept in churches as memorials, and to the honor and worship of Jesus Christ and His saints." He was further compelled to apologize upon his bended knees, and to solicit Stokesley's pardon. And, to add still more to his humiliation, the following confession was handed to him. Latimer, broken-spirited by the confinement which he had undergone, read thus:—
My Lords, I do confess that I have misordered myself very far in that I have so presumptuously and boldly preached reproving certain things, by which the people that were infirm hath occasion of ill. Wherefore I ask forgiveness of my misbehavior: I will be glad to make amends; and I ha ye spoken indiscreetly in vehemence of speaking, and have erred in some things.”
This was not the lowest depth to which Latimer was to descend, for after a further three weeks' confinement he was again brought before the Convocation, and then he signed all the articles. In these he was made to profess his faith in purgatory, in masses for the living and the dead, in the invocation of saints, in pilgrimages, and even in the duty of submitting to the Pope; in fact, in all the essential points of Romanism. It was a humiliating failure upon the part of Latimer, and he evidently felt the ignominy, for he wrote to a friend attempting to explain away his subscription. He was immediately brought to the bar once more in order that he might be punished for this fresh offense, and then, with admirable sagacity, Latimer appealed to the King. Probably by the King's command he was once more brought before his judges, and on his knees he owned that "whereas he had aforetime confessed that he had heretofore erred, meaning that it was only error of discretion, he had since better seen his own acts, and searched them more deeply, and doth acknowledge that he hath not erred only in discretion, but also in doctrine, and that he was not called before the said lords but upon good and just grounds, and had been by them charitably and favorably treated. And whereas he hath aforetime misreported of the lords, he acknowledges that he hath done ill in it, and desires them humbly to forgive him. And whereas he is not of ability to make them recompense, he will pray for them." Upon this Latimer was released, but only upon the understanding that in event of his receding from his recantation he should be once more brought up for judgment.
A striking contrast to this shameful submission is to be seen in the conduct of Bainham, a martyr who gave his life for the truth. Prompted perhaps by shame, Latimer called upon this confessor, and after attempting in vain to induce Bainham to recant as he had done, Latimer exhorted him to die bravely. The martyr replied, "I likewise do exhort you to stand to the defense of the truth; for you that shall be left behind have need of comfort also, the world being as dangerous as it is." With these brave words ringing still in his ears, Latimer returned to his village cure; one day he was also to "behave himself stoutly in the cause of Christ," but not yet.
Two events which occurred shortly after this denying of Christ conduced much to the spread of the new opinions in England.
On the 25th of January 1533 Henry was privately married to Anne Boleyn, and on the 30th of March 1533 Cranmer was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury. Encouraged perhaps by these favorable symptoms that the Papacy had lost its hold upon England, Latimer once more began to preach, and this time with greater boldness and clearness than ever.
In March 1533 he was in Bristol, and preached two sermons that threw the city into an uproar. The Papal party succeeded in silencing Latimer, and then they put forward some of their own creatures, whose office it was to revile both himself and his doctrines. One of their chief advocates met with his end thus, and the paragraph will illustrate the character of the opponents whom Latimer now encountered. Dr. Hubberdin— for such was his name— saw some villagers dancing, summoned them to the church, and preached to them upon dancing. "In this curious discourse he first cited some texts of Scripture, and then some sayings of the fathers; representing them as all joining in one tune, as he phrased it, in behalf of the sacrament of the altar against Frith, Luther, Latimer, and others. Not content with this absurd allegory, Hubberdin represented them as all dancing together to the same effect, and he then suited the action to the word by jumping about in the pulpit; exclaiming, Now dance Peter and Paul; now dance Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, &c. While proceeding in this strain and stamping and jumping about, the pulpit gave way, and came down with a crash among the congregation. In his fall Hubberdin broke one of his legs, from the effects of which accident he shortly after died. The churchwardens, being cited to answer for the slightness of the pulpit, replied that it was made for preaching in, not for dancing.'”
The character of the attacks upon the Reformers may be inferred from this anecdote, and Latimer now silenced, appealed in vain for an opportunity of replying to the slanders which were freely circulated about him. Eventually Cranmer, who was now supreme in the Church, intervened, and a Commission was sent down to Bristol in order to examine as to the causes of the recent disturbance. The inquiry fully vindicated Latimer, and it also showed that in their malice against the Reformer his enemies had spoken treason against the King. This was sufficient to bring down upon them the Royal displeasure, and Latimer was again left in peace. But the arguments of his enemies in defense of the practices of Popery had contributed not a little to open Latimer's eyes, and he drew farther away from them and their errors. Thus, as in other instances, the Papacy unconsciously contributed to the spread of doctrines which were subservient to its tyranny and aims.