It is impossible to contemplate the death of Edward without feeling for Cranmer and his colleagues in the Reformation. Their hearts might well sink within them in that hour. They had gone boldly forward in their great enterprise, beholding the danger before their eyes, for they could not be blind to it, but determined to do their duty and fear not; exasperating the Catholic party, headed as it was by a most bigoted princess, then the presumptive, now the actual, possessor of the throne, nor shrinking from incurring her personal displeasure, where the interests of religion required the risk, by the honest counsel they gave with respect to the concessions due to her, or the privileges which it was fitting to deny or to resume. Now they were in a situation which they must have long foreseen was likely to be their lot--at the mercy of an implacable foe. And the days and nights of anxiety which they must have spent at this crisis waiting for the policy of Mary to disclose itself, must be carried to the account of those silent sufferings which formed no small part of the purchase-money paid for the church they bequeathed to us, and which were more insupportable, perhaps, however less imposing, than the fire and the faggot itself. CHAPTER XII. MARY.--SUPPRESSION OF THE REFORMATION.--PERSECUTION OF THE REFORMERS.--FOX’S ACTS AND MONUMENTS. That God seeth not as man seeth, is a truth which he, who reads history aright, must soon be taught. Cranmer, overcome by his apprehensions for the safety of the reformed church under a Catholic queen, had acted from a principle of expediency, and placed, as far as an individual could, the Lady Jane Grey on a throne which did not belong to her. Had the event turned out as he hoped, had her seat been established, and Mary been set aside forever, it is probable that the Protestant cause, the very object which this act of injustice was meant to serve, would never have been so successful as it proved; for it would have been still fur-stripped of its temporal supports, and it would not have been consecrated by the blood of the martyr. God therefore ordained for it the fiery trial; and the Lady Jane was deposed almost as soon as she was proclaimed, to make way for her sincere but narrow-minded successor.