to an agreement. Edward offered his kingdom as an asylum for a Protestant synod, which might meet at Oxford or Cambridge; and the Archbishop wrote to Calvin and Melancthon, entreating their support. But oil and water would combine before Zuinglian and Lutheran would acquiesce in common formulas. Protestants, as Calvin assured him, hated each other far too heartily.[1] In another direction his exertions were equally unprofitable; and he was acting here under Calvin's advice.
The interference of the Church officials in the private concerns of the people had been among the chief provoking causes of the original revolt under Henry. The laity had flung off the yoke of the clergy. The ministers of the new order, mistaking the character of the change, imagined that the privileges and powers of the Catholic priesthood would be transferred to themselves. As teachers of 'the truth,' they were the exponents, in their own eyes, of the divine law, and they demanded the right to punish sin by spiritual censures—spiritual censures enforced by secular penalties.
Mankind, notwithstanding their frailties, are theoretically loyal to goodness; and, could there have been any security that the clergy would have confined their prosecutions to acts of immorality, that desire might perhaps have to some extent been indulged. But to the Church of Calvin, as well as to the Church of Rome, the darkest breach of the moral law was venial in com-
- ↑ Correspondence between Cranmer, Calvin, and Melancthon: Epistolæ Tigurinæ.
