After the ceremony the new archbishop returned to his place at Lambeth. From that hour this patron of letters, a scholar himself, a truly pious man, a distinguished preacher, and of indefatigable industry, never ceased to labor for the good of the Church. He was able to introduce Christian faith into many hearts, and sometimes to defend it against the king’s ill-humor. He constantly endeavored to spread around him moderation, charity, truth, piety, and peace. When Cranmer became primate of all England, on the 30th of March, 1533, in that cathedral of Westminster, the burial-place of kings, the papal order was interred, and it might be foreseen that the apostolic order would be revived. England preserved episcopacy because it was the form under which she had received Christianity in the second century, and because she thought it necessary for the functions of inspection and government in the Church. But she rejected that Roman superstition which makes bishops the sole successors of the apostles, and maintains that they are invested with an indelible character and a spiritual power which no other minister possesses.[256] ‘Most assuredly,’ said Cranmer, ‘at the beginning of the religion of Christ, bishops and presbyters (priests) were not two things, but one only.’[257] He declared that a bishop was not necessary to make a pastor; that not only presbyters possessed this right, but ‘_the people also by their election_.’ ‘Before there were Christian princes, it was the people,’ he said, ‘who generally elected the bishops and priests.’ Cranmer was not the only man who professed these principles, which make of the episcopalian and the presbyterian constitution two varieties, having many things in common. The most venerable fathers of the Anglican Church—Pilkington, Coverdale, Whitgift, Fulke, Tyndale, Jewel, Bradford, Becon, and others—have acknowledged the identity of bishops and presbyters. By the Reformation, England belongs not to the papistical system of episcopacy, but to the evangelical system. A public act which would bring back that Church to her holy origin, would be a source of great prosperity to her. The great reformers of England did not separate from Rome only, but also from the semi-catholicism that was intended to be substituted for it. To them the spirit and the life were in the ministry of the Word of God, and not in rites and ceremonies. By their noble example they have called all men of God to follow them. Footnote 221: ‘Protestamur quod nolumus alicui statuto edito in derogationem Romani pontificis consentire.’—Wilkins, _Concilia_, iii. p. 746. Footnote 222: There is a letter of his dated from Hampton Court, 12th June, 1531. Footnote 223: Cotton Ms., Vitellius, bk. xxi. p. 54. Footnote 224: ‘Commendatus primoribus civitatis facundia sua.’—Camerarius _Melanchthonis Vita_, p. 285. Footnote 225: