Reformed Churchmen

We are Confessional Calvinists and a Prayer Book Church-people. In 2012, we remembered the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer; also, we remembered the 450th anniversary of John Jewel's sober, scholarly, and Reformed "An Apology of the Church of England." In 2013, we remembered the publication of the "Heidelberg Catechism" and the influence of Reformed theologians in England, including Heinrich Bullinger's Decades. For 2014: Tyndale's NT translation. For 2015, John Roger, Rowland Taylor and Bishop John Hooper's martyrdom, burned at the stakes. Books of the month. December 2014: Alan Jacob's "Book of Common Prayer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Common-Prayer-Biography-Religious/dp/0691154813/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417814005&sr=8-1&keywords=jacobs+book+of+common+prayer. January 2015: A.F. Pollard's "Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation: 1489-1556" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-English-Reformation-1489-1556/dp/1592448658/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420055574&sr=8-1&keywords=A.F.+Pollard+Cranmer. February 2015: Jaspar Ridley's "Thomas Cranmer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-Jasper-Ridley/dp/0198212879/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422892154&sr=8-1&keywords=jasper+ridley+cranmer&pebp=1422892151110&peasin=198212879

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

3 June 1594 A.D. Mr. (Bp.) John Aylmer, Church of England, Dies—English Reformer


3 June 1594 A.D.  Mr. (Bp.) John Aylmer, Church of England, Dies—English Reformer.

Wiki tells the wee-story.

John Aylmer (Ælmer or Elmer; 1521 - 3 June 1594) was an English bishop, constitutionalist and a Greek scholar.[1]

Contents 



Early life and career


He was born at Aylmer Hall, Tilney St. Lawrence, Norfolk. While still a boy, his precocity was noticed by Henry Grey, 3rd Marquess of Dorset, later 1st Duke of Suffolk, who sent him to Cambridge, where he seems to have become a fellow of Queens' College.[2] About 1541 he was made chaplain to the duke, and tutor of Greek [3] to his daughter, Lady Jane Grey.

His first preferment was to the archdeaconry of Stow, in the diocese of Lincoln, but his opposition in Convocation to the doctrine of transubstantiation led to his deprivation and to his flight into Switzerland. While there he wrote a reply to John Knox's famous Blast against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, under the title of An Harborowe for Faithfull and Trewe Subjects, etc., and assisted John Foxe in translating the Acts of the Martyrs into Latin. On the accession of Elizabeth he returned to England. In 1559 he resumed the Stow archdeaconry, and in 1562 he obtained that of Lincoln. He was a member of the famous convocation of 1562, which reformed and settled the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England.

In 1576 he was consecrated Bishop of London, and while in that position made himself notorious by his harsh treatment of all who differed from him on ecclesiastical questions, whether Puritan or Roman Catholic. Various efforts were made to remove him to another see. He is frequently assailed in the famous Mar prelate Tracts, and is characterized as "Morrell," the bad shepherd, in Edmund Spenser's Shepheard's Calendar (July). His reputation as a scholar hardly balances his inadequacy as a bishop in the transition time in which he lived. His Life was written by John Strype (1701).

Works


"Aylmer, like John Ponet and Stephen Gardiner before him, is an important figure in the story of the reception of classical mixed government in Tudor England." [4] John Aylmer wrote his work An harborowe for faithful and trewe subiectes (1559), to defend the female monarchy of Elizabeth I associating "the rule of boyes and women, or effeminate persons" and on another basis; "that cytie is at pits brinks, wherein magistrate ruleth lawes, and not the lawes the magistrate: What could any kyng in Israell do in that common wealth, besides the pollycie appointed by Moyses?". His effort to familiarize his fellow countrymen with the "strange and alluring vocabulary of politics", introducing them to the classical forms and terminology, must be viewed as secondary to this primary goal.

Aylmer nevertheless described England as not "a mere monarchy, as some for lack of consideration think, nor a mere oligarchy, nor democracy, but a rule mixed of all these." 1 He goes on to say that in the mixed state, "each one of these have or should have like authority." He argued that in the king-in-Parliament, or, in Elizabeth's case, the queen-in-Parliament, was not the "image" of a mixed state "but the thing in deed." It was in Parliament that one found the three estates: "the king or queen, which representeth the monarchy; the noble men which be the aristocracy; and the burgesses and knights the democracy." As he says, "In like manner, if the Parliament use their privileges: the king can ordain nothing without them." Parliamentary restraint of a queen's feminine vices would, according to Aylmer, ameliorate the disadvantages of female monarchy.

His work, particularly his characterisation of England as a mixed monarchy, would be important to later English constitutionalists.

Notes


1.      Jump up ^ Dangerous Positions; Mixed Government, the Estates of the Realm, and the Making of the "Answer to the xix propositions", Michael Mendle, University of Alabama Press, 1985. pg 49.

2.      Jump up ^ "Aylmer, John (ALMR540J)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge. 

3.      Jump up ^ Dangerous Positions, Mendle. pg 61.

4.      Jump up ^ Dangerous Positions, Mendle. pg 50.

References



External links


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