History of the English People, Volume IVGreen, John Richard
History
History of the English People, Volume IV
Green, John Richard
Great Britain -- History
The results of this contact first showed themselves at Frankfort. At the
instigation of Whittingham, who in Elizabeth's days became Dean of
Durham, a body of English exiles that had found shelter there resolved
to reform both worship and discipline. The obnoxious usages were
expunged from the Prayer-Book, omissions were made in the communion
service, a minister and deacons chosen, and rules drawn up for church
government after the Genevan model. Free at last "from all dregs of
superstitious ceremonies" the Frankfort refugees thanked God "that had
given them such a church in a strange land wherein they might hear God's
holy word preached, the sacraments rightly ministered, and discipline
used, which in their own country could never be obtained." But their
invitation to the other English exiles to join them in the enjoyment of
these blessings met with a steady repulse. Lever and the exiles at
Zuerich refused to come unless they might "altogether serve and praise
God as freely and uprightly as the order last taken in the Church of
England permitteth and presenteth, for we are fully determined to admit
and use no other." The main body of the exiles who were then gathered at
Strassburg echoed the refusal. Knox however, who had been chosen
minister by the Frankfort congregation, moved rapidly forward, rejecting
the communion service altogether as superstitious, and drawing up a new
"order" of worship after the Genevan model. But in the spring of 1555
these efforts were foiled by the arrival of fresh exiles from England of
a more conservative turn: the reformers were outvoted; Knox was driven
from the town by the magistrates "in fear of the Emperor" whom he had
outraged in an "Admonition" to the English people which he had lately
issued; and the English service was restored. Whittingham and his
adherents, still resolute, as Bale wrote, "to erect a Church of the
Purity" (we may perhaps trace in the sneer the origin of their later
name of Puritans), found a fresh refuge at Basle and Geneva, where the
leaders of the party occupied themselves in a metrical translation of
the Psalms which left its traces on English psalmody and in the
production of what was afterwards known as the Geneva Bible.
[Sidenote: The seditious books.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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