parison with errors of opinion; and the consequence which England had to expect from a restoration of clerical authority might be seen in the language of one who was loudest in the demand for it. John Knox, the shrewdest and one of the noblest of the Reformers, did not conceal his opinion that Gardiner, Bonner, and Cuthbert Tunstal might have been justly put to death for nonconformity.[1] But Parliament had not refused absolutely to entertain the question. The Lords rejected, as we have seen; a scheme which would simply replace the bishops in the position which they had forfeited; but the old mixed commission of thirty-two had been re-established for the revision of the canon law; and in March, 1552, the commissioners would have made some progress, it was said, had not Ridley, and Goodrich, Bishop of Ely, who had succeeded Lord Rich as Chancellor, 'stood in the way with their worldly policy.'[2] The thirty-two were afterwards reduced to eight, and in the following November a fresh commission was appointed, consisting of Cranmer, Goodrich, Coxe, and Peter Martyr, with four lawyers and civilians. The
- ↑ 'God's justice,' says Knox, in his Admonition to the Faithful in England, 'is not wont to cut off wicked men till their iniquity is so manifest that their very flatterers cannot excuse it. If Stephen Gardiner, Cuthbert Tunstal, and butcherly Bonner, false bishops of Winchester, Durham, and London, had, for their false doctrines and traitorous acts, suffered death when they justly deserved the same, then would Papists have alleged that they were men reformable,' &c. In the Constitution of the Church of Scotland, which was drawn under Knox's influence, to say mass, or to hear it, was made a capital crime—under the authority of the text, 'The idolater shall die the death.'
- ↑ Micronius to Bullinger: Epistolæ Tigurinæ.
