least, that the heirs should recover them upon moderate terms.[1] In the Reforming party there was difference of opinion on the legality of secularizing property which had been given to God. Latimer, and partially Cromwell, inherited the designs of Wolsey; instead of taking away from the Church the lands of the abbeys, they were desirous of seeing those lands transferred to the high and true interests of religion. They wished to convert the houses into places of education, and to reform, wherever possible, the ecclesiastical bodies themselves.[2] This, too, was the dream, the 'devout imagination,' as it was called, of Knox, in Scotland, as it has been since the dream of many other good men who have not rightly understood why the moment at which the Church was washed clean from its stains, and came out fresh robed in the wedding-garment of purity, should have been chosen to strip it of its resources, and depose it from power and pre-eminence. Cranmer, on the other hand, less imaginative but more practical, was re-
- ↑ Many letters from country gentlemen to this effect are in the collection made by Sir Henry Ellis.
- ↑ Latimer at first even objected to monks leaving their profession. Speaking of racking Scripture, he says, 'I myself have been one of them that hath racked it; and the text, 'He that putteth his hand to the plough, and looketh back,' I have believed and expounded against religious persons that would forsake their order, and would go out of their cloyster.'—Sermons, p. 60. We find him entreating Cromwell to prevent the suppression of Great Malvern, and begging that it may be allowed to remain—'Not in monkery, but any other ways as should seem good to the King's Majesty, as to maintain teaching, preaching, study, with praying and good housekeeping.'—Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 149. Late in his life, under Edw. VI., he alluded bitterly to the decay of education, and the misuse of the appropriated abbey lands.—Sermons, p. 291.
