“Admitting him” (says Milner to Sturges) “to have been conscientiously persuaded of the truth of the Reformation, was it consistent with christian integrity and virtue to dissemble his religion for twenty years together, and repeatedly abjure it, as he certainly did as often as he found himself threatened with any serious danger by adhering to it? Was it consistent with integrity and virtue to accept of one of the highest offices, the bishopric of Worcester, in a church which he so much reprobated, and even to take an oath of opposing, to the utmost of his power, all persons who dissented from, or were disobedient to it? But supposing you inclined to overlook all this, what will you say to the share he took in the religious persecutions both of Henry’s and of Edward’s reign? What excuse will you make for him when you find him sending christians and protestants to the stake for the very opinion which he himself holds?” {650} These are serious charges, and all apparently well-founded; but the chief and heaviest of them is his being a bloody persecutor. He was moreover one of our chief English reformers, on which account the above brief sketch of his character has been here introduced, along with the rest of his most conspicuous associates, to give the reader an opportunity to judge what veneration is due to their memory, or how well or ill they deserved of their contemporaries and of posterity. _Ridley_ is another of our protestant prelates that appeared at the head of our English Reformation. Dr. _Sturges_ describes him as “active in the conduct of ecclesiastical affairs.” To which his keen and able opponent replies: “I think, sir, you will grant that he shewed rather too much activity in these affairs, to be consistent with integrity, after I shall have reminded you, that when bishop of Rochester in Henry’s days, and when bishop of London in those of Edward, he was as forward in persecuting protestants and anabaptists as Cranmer, Latimer, and the rest of the prelates were; and that he was one of the most zealous and forward of Dudley’s partisans in endeavouring to interrupt the regular succession of the throne, and in raising that rebellion which was attended with the loss of so much blood.” {651}