_Hooper_, another of our chief reformers, was much less active than Ridley in the conduct of ecclesiastical affairs. He was somewhat scrupulous about certain vestments and ceremonies; and he might have some scruples too on the subject of persecution: at least it is not in the present writer’s recollection that he was very forward, like the others, in harassing those who were called heretics. His character, however, seems not so indefectible as to entitle him to be held up as a mirror of evangelical soundness, or an object of universal admiration. He has been charged with being the founder of the sect called _puritans_, which proved so troublesome to our rulers in church and state for a whole century or more: but this is not mentioned here as a blemish in his character. The following circumstances are of a more blamable nature: 1. His obtaining and holding the bishopric of Worcester, in addition to his former bishopric of Gloucester, after having inveighed very strongly in his sermons against pluralities: 2. His consenting to wear the vestments, after having engaged the young king to write to Cranmer that they “were offensive to his conscience;” and his taking the oath of supremacy, after having made his patron, Dudley, write to the same prelate that “it was burdensome to his conscience,” when he found that he could not get promotion otherwise. {652a} But in our English reformation, under Henry VIII, and Edward VI, the chief agent was confessedly archbishop _Cranmer_, whose character, as exhibited by eminent protestant writers, abounded with great and glaring blemishes. “The first remarkable circumstance we meet in the life of Cranmer is his privately marrying a woman of low condition, whilst he was fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, {652b} contrary to the engagements of his admission. He afterwards, when a priest, [and while his first wife was alive] married a second wife in Germany, by a much more flagrant violation of his vow of celibacy, and having brought her privately into England, he continued to live with her, in equal opposition to the laws of the church and of the land,” [and though he had assured the king that he had sent her home to Germany.] “Being a Lutheran in principle, as far back as the year 1529, he afterwards accepted the office of pope’s penitentiary, and when named to the archbishopric of Canterbury he was content to accept different bulls from the pontiff to take upon himself the character of his legate in England, and even to make a solemn oath of obedience to him, {652c} with an obligation of opposing all heretics and schismatics, that is to say, according to the received sense of the words, all persons of his own religious persuasion. In like manner he must have said mass, which, in his opinion, was an idolatrous worship, both at his consecration, and frequently at other times, during the fourteen years that he governed the church of England under Henry. He