The result of this policy was Puritanism, and the first Puritan was John Hooper. An Oxford scholar at the time of the passage of the Statute of the Six Articles, Hooper was severe in its denunciation, and in consequence was obliged to leave the university. Afterward, further persisting in his opposition to the ecclesiastical tyranny of Henry, he fled to Germany, where he pursued his studies in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and became a learned scholar and divine. Returning to London early in the reign of Edward, he was permitted by Somerset to preach, and recommended by him to the King. He was afterward commanded by his Majesty to continue his labors, and on the 5th of February, 1550, received orders from the King and Council to preach before the court once a week during Lent. In 1550 he was appointed Bishop of Gloucester, but declined it on account of the oath, and the habits worn by the bishops. The oath of supremacy was made in the name of God and the saints and the Holy Ghost, which Hooper thought impious, because God alone ought to be appealed to. The King, becoming convinced of this, struck the offensive words out of the oath; but the scruples of the new bishop concerning the habits were not so easily reconciled. The King and Cranmer were inclined to dispense with them, but a majority of the Council said, “The thing is indifferent, and therefore the law ought to be obeyed.” After a contest of nine months, in the course of which Hooper suffered a short imprisonment for his contumacy, a compromise was effected, by which he consented to be robed in his habits at his consecration, and when he preached before the King or in any public place, but at all other times they should be dispensed with. Pending the settlement of this vexed question the Reformation went on. The doctrine of the Church was yet to be remodelled. Under the direction of Archbishop Cranmer and Bishop Ridley, forty-two articles were framed upon the chief points of Christian faith, which, after correction and approval by other bishops and divines, received the royal sanction. These articles are, with some alterations, the same as those now in use, having been reduced to thirty-nine at the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth. The final work of reformation in Edward’s reign was a second revision of the Book of Common Prayer, by which some new features were added, and some of those which had proved oppressive to advanced reformers struck out. Thus ended, in 1553, the reign of Edward, the boy King, whose death at the age of sixteen dashed the well-grounded hopes of the nation for a gradual but in the end a thorough reform.