'What a swarm of false Christians have we among us,' said the large-minded Becon; 'gross gospellers, which can prattle of the gospel very finely, talk much of justification by faith, crack very stoutly for the free remission of their sins by Christ's blood. As for their almsdeeds, their praying, their watching, their fasting, they are utterly banished from these gospellers. They are puffed up with pride, they swell with envy, they wallow in pleasures, they burn with concupiscence. Their covetous acts are insatiable, the increasing their substance, the scraping together of worldly possessions. Their religion consisteth in words and disputations; in Christian acts and godly deeds nothing at all.'[1]
Of this class of men the highest living representative was the Earl of Warwick, the ruling spirit of the English Reformation in the phase into which it now had drifted.
To return to the Princess Mary.
There being no longer, as it seemed, occasion to fear the resentment of the Emperor, August 9.the council, on the 9th of August, resolved to execute their resolution, and put an end to her resistance with a high hand. 'They considered how long and patiently the King had laboured in vain to bring her to conformity.' They 'considered how much her obstinacy and the toleration of it endangered the peace of the realm.' Her chaplains, therefore, should be compelled for the future to perform in her chapel the English service
- ↑ Becon's Jewel of Joy.
