This contrasts with the Laudian conviction that the marytrdom of Latimer and Ridley was one of the glories of the Church of England. In his Ecclesia restaurata, Laudian polemicist Peter Heyln notes his approval of Foxe's Acts and Monuments while praising Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley:
Being resolved to wave the writing of a Martyrlogy, which is done already to my hand in the 'Acts and Monuments', I shall insist only upon three of most rank, that is to say, Archbishop Cranmer, Bishop Latimer, and Bishop Ridley, men of renown, never to be forgotten in the Church of England.
For John Cosin, the martyrs of the English Reformation witnessed to the kinship between the ecclesia Anglicana and the Reformed Churches on the continent:
These men, (whose predecessors were burned up and and, martyred, as ours have been,) being in such times of persecution received and harboured in our Churches, gave us the like relief in theirs, both in Germany and France.
Preaching at the re-establishment of the Irish episcopate in January 1661, Jeremy Taylor invoked the martyred bishops:
The Reformation of Religion in England was principally by the Preachings and the disputings, the writings and the Martyrdom of Bishops.
Taylor here reflected a well-established Conformist narrative in which the witness of Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer was presented as an integral part of the Conformist cause. Bancroft in his famous 1588 sermon described the martyred bishops as those "who have most notably sealed unto us the very grounds and substance of religion with their blood". He went on to declare that this called for conformity:
Or is it likely that that Church which was able to discern betwixt truth and falsehood in so great points of doctrine being wrapped through continuance of time in so deep an obscurity; should be unable to judge of ceremonies, forms of prayer, decency, order, edification, and such like circumstances of no greater weight? You would not, I think, take it in good part, that men should now begin to sift and quarrel at the articles of religion, set out and approved in the year 1562. and yet I see no reason why they may not as well do it, as to carp and control at such orders, as were then likewise established for order and government.
The Laudian Heylyn likewise used the witness of the martyred bishops to challenge those who disturbed the peace and unity of the Church of England:
They reject the whole frame and fabric of the Reformation made in England, conformed themselves wholly to the fashions of the Church of Geneva, and therewith entertain also the Calvinian Doctrines, to the discredit of the state of the Church of England in King Edward's time, the great grief of the Martyrs and other godly men in the reign of Queen Mary.
Without these and other martyrs, without their writings, testimonies, and then final witness, the Church of England begins to look like the product of a misguided, even sinful schism and not what it truly was, a Church born of a separation rooted in reform and renewal, undertaken in good faith, sound in doctrine and practice, and a faithful, reliable witness to a truly Catholic and apostolic Christianity.
ReplyDeleteClint many thanks for your comment. You make an excellent point: without recognising the cause of these martyrs, the separation of the 16th century does appear as sinful schism. Related to this, it might be the case that the decline in Anglican confidence over the past century is related to distancing ourselves from the witness and teachings of these martyrs, resulting in us being unable to give a coherent rationale for those actions at the Reformation which established the CofE as a self-governing national Church.
DeleteBrian.