Ridley, Jaspar. Thomas Cranmer. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. Mr. Ridley gives us some further leads for inquiry.
Pp.8-9. The dueling biographies go on.
Macaulay, Thomas. The Works of Lord Macaulay (Albany ed.) London, 1898. Several volumes cited at: http://www.amazon.com/
Macaulay, a 19th century (Whiggish?) historian, says, vii, 235, 239:
“…if we consider Cranmer merely as a statesman, he will not appear a much worse man than Wolsey, Gardiner, Cromwell, or Somerset. But when an attempt is made to set him up as a saint, it is scarcely possible for any man who knows the history of the time to preserve his gravity.” Cranmer was “not a monster of wickedness, but merely a supple, timid, and interested courtier. As for willingness to forgive, he was comparable to the attitude of the slave who feels neither gratitude for kindness nor resentment of injuries” and he was proof that he “was not only above revenge, but below it.”
With a bit more hostility, Mr. William Cobbett, in his The History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland, 1829, offers another virulent view of Mr. Cranmer. Cobbett, William. History of the English Reformation in England and Ireland. Charlotte, NC: Tan Book and Publishers, 1999. The hardcopy is available here: http://www.amazon.com/History-Protestant-Reformation-England-Ireland/dp/0895553538/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375918535&sr=8-1&keywords=William+Cobbett+history+of+the+protestant+reformation It is available online at: http://books.google.com/books?id=klw0RBILtmAC&pg=PT257&dq=william+cobbett+history+of+the+protestant+reformation&hl=en&sa=X&ei=u9sCUtjZNMWw4AOuzID4Cg&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=william%20cobbett%20history%20of%20the%20protestant%20reformation&f=false
Mr. Cobbett says:
“…a name which deserves to be held in everlasting execration; a name which we could not pronounce without almost doubting of the justice of God, were it not for our knowledge of the fact that the man was the cold-blooded, most perfidious, most blasphemous caitiff expired at last amidst those flames which he had been the chief cause of kindling…the progress of this man in the paths of infamy need incontestable proof to reconcile the human mind to a belief in it.”
Cranmer “can be surpassed by nothing of which human depravity is capable…”
By the 19th century, there were 30 biographies and biographical essays on Mr. Cranmer.
Merle D’Aubigne rallied 19th century English defenders of Mr. Cranmer, although we must say it's near-wise faint praise acknowledging Mr. Cranmer's manifold weaknesses in the Tudor maelstrom with the Sovereign God trumping it all.
Mr. D’Aubigne’s works cover a wider field than just England. It may be recalled that some Tractarians opposed Mr. D’Aubigne’s invitation to speak in England; it was resolved and he spoke, but no thanks to the 19th century Anglican 2.0 and 4.0 versions.
D’Aubigne, Merle. The History of the Reformation in England, 2 Vols. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1963. Volume 1 is available at: http://www.amazon.com/
Mr. D’Aubigne says in his “Letter to the Marquis of Cholmandeley:”
"I much prefer a character like Luther, Calvin or Knox. God employs for the mysterious accomplishment of His purposes a great variety of characters…if this God of sovereign wisdom gave a Cranmer and not a Luther to the Church of England, it was because in His unanswerable counsel, He had given as King to its people not a Frederick the Wise but a Henry VIII. The extreme prudence of Cranmer, his timidity, his want of decision, his pliability, deplorable in certain cases, preserved him under the government of the despotic Tudor from the scaffold to which that bloody Prince sent many of his Bishops and statesmen, and thus served, with his own life, the work for which he was required…He was the instrument employed by God for a work which, while it has saved, during the last three centuries, thousands and thousands of souls, and has served as a torch to illumine the most distant nations, has at the same time created and preserved the most powerful and illustrious nation which modern times have witnessed.”
Littledale, R.F. Innovation: a lecture delivered in the Assembly Rooms, Liverpool, April 23rd 1868. Oxford and London, 1868." We could not find this in hardcopy; it appears to have been put out in a pamphlet-form. Mr. Littledale was a Tractarian.
But "Dublin Review" offers a brief review of Mr. Littledale's racy diatribe at: http://books.google.com/
Here is how the Dublin Review cites it:
"Innovations. A Lecture delivered at Liverpool" by R. F. LITTLEDALE, LL.D., D.C.L. London : Simpkin, Marsall, & Co.
"DR. LITTLEDALE is well known as a leading Ritualist, and this is a most lively and spirited brochure. The author indeed would hardly profess, we suppose, that he intends all his statements "au pied de la lettre": such, e. g., as that no Anglican clergyman is an honest man who does not recite the Prayer-Book service regularly twice a day (p. 23) ; or that C'ranmer is "the most infamous personage in English history, compared with whom John Plantagenet and Henry Tudor have light shades in their characters " (p. 36); or that to deny the communion of saints is no less malignant an error than to deny a future life (p. 35). Still it will be easy for his readers in each case to take off the necessary discount; and we have nowhere seen the misdeeds of the Anglican Reformers at once so briefly and so effectively exhibited as in Dr. Littledale's various notes.
"We append a few spicy passages, to whet our reader's appetite for the whole.
"'A Church which could produce in its highest ranks such a set of miscreants as the leading English and Scottish Reformers, must have been in a perfectly rotten state" (p. 15).
"Robespierre, Danton, Marat .... merit quite as much respect as Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer" (ib.).
"That young tiger-cub Edward VI." (p. 17).
"That frivolous old heathen Lord Palmerston " (p. 21).
"The Broad Church party, as a party, will nether believe anything nor do anything; .... it is about as useful for propagating Christianity as the Board of Trade is " (p. 20).
The Irish Establishment "does less work and inspires less affection than any religious body of its size in the world" (p. 28).
"We," the Ritualists, "don't mean to be quiet, and we don't mean to secede, and we don't mean to be put down" (ib.).
"Cranmer and his accomplices founded the Church of England just as William Lloyd made the Portland Vase: that is, they did not break and shatter it so completely as to prevent honest men from repairing it" (p. 62).
But, putting the Dublin Review to the side, Mr. Jaspar Ridley brings another hostile gem from Mr. R.F. Littledale on Mr. (Canterbury) Cranmer:
Cranmer was a “liar and a thief…how anyone with any sense of religion, of honour, of manly feeling, can look on him with any sentiments save those of disgust and indignation…and on the assumption that courage in a man was the equivalent of purity in a woman…Cranmer must take his stand with Lais and Messalina, nay the nameless depravities which we associate with Faustina and Sappho.”
And so it goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment