History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. IIIFroude, James Anthony
History
History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. III
Froude, James Anthony
Great Britain -- History -- Tudors, 1485-1603
Secondly, there were the Anglicans, strictly orthodox in the speculative
system of the faith, content to separate from Rome, but only that they
might bear Italian fruit more profusely and luxuriantly when rooted in
their own soil. Of these the avowed leaders were the majority of the
bishops and the peers of the old creation, agreeing for the present to
make the experiment of independence, but with a secret dislike to
change, and a readiness, should occasion require, to return to the
central communion. Weak in their reasoning, and selfish in their
objects, the Anglicans were of importance only from the support of the
conservative English instinct, which then as ever preferred the
authority of precedent to any other guide, and defended established
opinions and established institutions because they had received them
from their fathers, and because their understandings were slow in
entertaining new convictions.
[Sidenote: The Lutherans.]
To the third or Lutheran party, belonged Cranmer, Latimer, Barnes,
Shaxton, Crome, Hilsey, Jerome, Barlow, all the government Reformers of
position and authority, adhering to the real presence, and, in a general
sense, to the sacraments, but melting them away in the interpretation.
The true creed of these men was spiritual, not mechanical. They abhorred
idolatry, images, pilgrimages, ceremonies, with a Puritan fervour. They
followed Luther in the belief in justification by faith, they rejected
masses, they did not receive the sacerdotal system, they doubted
purgatory, they desired that the clergy should be allowed to marry, they
differed from the Protestants in the single but vital doctrine of
transubstantiation. This party after a few years ceased to exist,
developing gradually from the type of Wittenberg to that of Geneva.
[Sidenote: The Protestants proper.]
Lastly, and still confounded in a common mass of abomination, lay
Zuinglians, Anabaptists, sacramentarians, outcasts disowned and cursed
by all the rest as a stigma and reproach; those whose hearts were in the
matter, who supplied the heat which had melted the crust of habit, and
had made the Reformation possible.
[Sidenote: The creed of Cromwell.]
[Sidenote: The creed of the king.]
[Sidenote: Parties in the Privy Council.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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