A reply to Cobbett's "History of the protestant reformation in England and Ireland."

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Contents

CHAPTER. TAGE.

I. Introductory Chapter .... 1 II. The Introduction of Christianity into England, and the Alleged Supremacy of the Bishop of Bome — His Usurpation in England, and Final Overthrow by Henry VIII. . . 33

III. Henry VIII. . . . . .81

Chapter I. Introductory Chapter

When a book is placed in our hands purporting to be a history of political, social, or religious events, especially such as are connected ■with our own country, we naturally inquire as to the character and antecedents of the author ; on what authority or evidence his statements are proposed for acceptance ; and the manner in which the subject is placed before us.

The book passing by the name of " A History of the Protestant Reformation," by the late Mr. William Cobbett, has been recently reprinted by Roman Catholics in an exceptionally cheap form, and most industriously and extensively circulated by them. The channel through which we receive this reprint obviously necessitates the preliminary inquiries suggested. The work is proposed for acceptance on the alleged fact that its author was a Protestant, and a member of the Church of England ; and that, therefore, his motives at least cannot be questioned, and his statements ought to be accepted as against members of his own communion. The proposition is plausible, but the alleged fact of his being, at the time he wrote the work in question, either a member of the Church of England, or even a Protestant, is most questionable. At any rate, if startling assertions, purporting to be historical facts, contrary to all our preconceived notions of the events brought under review, are required to be accepted, they should be temperately advanced, and corroborated by unimpeachable evidence ; whereas, when we examine

B this book, we find a series of bold and dogmatic assertions, clothed in language of the coarsest and most vituperative character, without one single indication throughout that Mr. Cobbett is expressing any other than his own private opinions. But the matter does not rest here. He is not contented with the dogmatic expression of his own opinions, but he unceremoniously sets down all other writers differing from himself as hypocrites or liars.

Our great historian, Hume, Mr. Cobbett describes as a "calumniator of Catholic institutions ;" a this "lying historian." 5 — The " falsehoods of Hume's descriptions." c The " monstrous lies of Hume." d The "unfeeling and malignant Hume." e The "false and malignant and selfish Hume." f " The malignity of this liar exceeded his cunning." e The " malignant liar, Hume." h The " lying book, which the Scotch call our history." » The " malignant lies of Hume." k " Back then ; down, thou malignant liar, and tell the devil that the Protestant Bishop Tanner has sent thee." * These extracts (samples merely of many similar passages) sufficiently indicate the character and temper of the writer. To place Mr. Cobbett in the rank of an historian is simply ridiculous. His strong passions and prejudices ; his inability to restrain them ; his inconsistency with himself; his changeableness of principle and opinion ; render it totally impossible for him either to write of or judge any history. And this is the man who ventures to pass a censure on England's greatest historian.

Of Burnet, the great Protestant historian and bishop, whose History procured him an honour never before or since paid to any writer — the thanks of both Houses of Parliament, with a desire that he would prosecute the undertaking, and complete his valuable work, " The History of the Reformation in England," a work which has been deemed worthy to be translated into most European languages — of Burnet and his History, Mr. Cobbett speaks, as " That calculating, cold-blooded, brazen Burnet." m " The vile pen of Burnet." n " The malignity of Burnet." " Our lying Protestant historian." P "Vile calumniator." °. "A monstrously lying historian." r " His History of the Reformation," he says, " is a mass of the most base falsehoods and misrepresentations that ever were put on paper." a Burnet establishes every statement by documents taken from our authentic records, which he prints in extenso ; whereas Mr. Cobbett, on the other hand, has not verified one single assertion by a single reference, his entire " History " resting on his own sole authority and dictum !

Foxe, the Martyrologist, he calls the "lying Foxe;" b "vile calumniator; " c "the author of the lying Book of Martyrs; " d and he declares him to have a "total disregard of truth." e f

The following is a sample of the method of conveying the very grossest slander, and for which there is not the remotest reliable evidence, and which professedly emanated from a Jesuit : — " It is positively asserted that Anne Boleyn was the King's daughter; now, though I believe this fact, I do not give it as a thing the truth of which is undeniable — I believe it, but I do not give it, as I do the other facts that I state, as what is undeniably true." s The idea of a man like Mr. Cobbett being scrupulous as to an assertion being founded on an ascertained fact ! Throughout his entire History he does not, as I have said, give one single authority for his other assertions, and he requires us to receive these as undeniable truths ; but in this piece of choice calumny, he does not request us to believe the slander, although he affects in this instance to give an authority to support it, which he does not fail to tell us is sufficient to convince him of its truth ! This is the method he adopts to pass current a notorious falsehood by an affectation of candour, or rather a hesitation to impose on us as an historical fact that which he himself pretends to believe as true, so that we may accept the other statements as undeniably true.

f " Invariable accuracy is not to be expected in any historical work of suck extent ; but it may be truly said of England's venerable martyrologist, that his relations are more than ordinarily worthy of reliance. His principal object being, indeed, to leave behind him a vast mass of authentic information relating to those miserable times which it had been his lot to witness, he printed a vast mass of original letters, records of judicial processes, and other documentary evidence. The result of this judicious policy was a work which has highly gratified the friends of Protestantism, and successfully defied its enemies. Numerous attacks have been levelled at the honest chronicler of Romish intolerance, but they have ever fallen harmless from the assailant's hand." — Soames' " History of the Reformation," vol. iv. p. 721. London, 1826.

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What would Mr. Cobbett's patrons say if we were to adopt the same method of conveying an accusation against him ? " It is positively asserted that a Jesuit wrote the book (now under consideration), and that Mr. Cobbett put his name to it. a I believe it, but I do not give it, as I do the other facts that I state, as what is undeniably true." Indeed, the work has throughout the appearance of being dictated by a Jesuit, but written with the pen of a Cobbett.

Mr. Cobbett was the son of a small farmer, who drove a plough at twopence a day. b He spent his early days in the country. He ran away from his home and enlisted as a soldier in 1784, rose to the rank of sergeant-major, and got his discharge in 1791. He then left for America, and became a political writer, adopting violent anti-republican sentiments. He was there prosecuted for a libel, which necessitated his return to England in a.d. 1800. Here he started a political journal, " The Porcupine," of Tory principles. He changed his political creed, and with it the title of his paper, which he afterwards called " The Register." He was now a Radical. His Radical propensities subjected him to a prosecution for a libel by the Government. He was fined and imprisoned. Becoming involved in his pecuniary affairs, he evaded his creditors by going back to America. Here he became farmer, but his active and restless mind could not brook inaction, so he returned to England, and brought with him a box, containing, as he pretended, the bones of Tom Paine, as relics and token of his veneration for this notorious infidel. It was, however, currently reported at the time, that the box contained nothing more than the old bones of a nigger, which Mr. Cobbett now desired, not unlike the fashion adopted with modern Roman relic-mongers, to palm off for the genuine article belonging to the dead infidel.

Mr. Cobbett's most modern biographer, Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, G.C.B., in his " Historical Characters," c refers to this event in the following terms : —

" He (Cobbett) was essentially an actor, and disposed to study

a Stephens' " Spirit of the Church of Rome," 2nd edition, 1843, p. 245. b "Life of William Cobbett;" written by Himself, p. 4, 2nd edition, London, 1809.

the dramatic in all his proceedings. To slink back unperceived to his old haunts and recommence quietly his old habits, would neither suit his tastes, nor, as he thought, his interests. It was necessary that his return should be a sensation. Too vain and too quarrelsome to pay court to any one, he through life made friends by making enemies. His plan now was to raise a howl against the returning exile as an atheist and a demagogue amongst one portion of society, not doubting that, in such case, he would be taken up as the champion of civil and religious liberty by another.

" The device he adopted for this object was disinterring, or saying he had disinterred, the bones of Thomas Paine, whom he had formerly assailed as ' the greatest disgrace of mankind,' and now declared to be ' the greatest enlightener of the human race,' and carrying these bones over to England as the relics of a patron saint, under whose auspices he was to carry on his future political career.

" Now, Paine had been considered the enemy of kingly government and the Christian religion in his time, and had greatly occupied the attention of Cobbett, who had styled him ' an infamous and atrocious miscreant,' but he had never been a man of great weight or note in our country ; many of the existing generation scarcely knew his name, and those who did felt but a very vague retrospective interest in his career. In vain Cobbett celebrated him as ' an unflinching advocate for the curtailment of aristocratic al power,' and 'the boldest champion of popular rights,' In vain he gave it clearly to be understood that Paine did not believe a word of the Old Testament or the New ; nobody, in spite of Cobbett's damning encomiums, would care about Paine, or consider a box of old bones as anything but a bad joke. So that, after vainly offering locks of hair or any particle of the defunct and exhumed atheist and republican at a low price, considering the value of the relics, he let the matter drop, and, rubbing his hands and chuckling with that peculiar sardonic smile which I well remember, began to treat the affair as the world did, and the inestimable fragments of the disinterred Quaker suddenly disappeared, and were never heard of more."

The same biographer gives the following characteristic which pervaded Mr. Cobbett's writings at this time : —

" He had a sort of itch, for bespattering with mud everything that was popular, and gilding everything that was odious. Mary Tudor was, with him, 'merciful Queen Mary;' Elizabeth, as I have already observed, ' Bloody Queen Bess ; ' our Navy, ' the swaggering Navy ; ' Napoleon, ' a French coxcomb ; ' Brougham, ' a talking lawyer ; ' Canning, ' a brazen defender of corruptions ; ' and the disciples of Penn, ' the unbaptised buttonless blackguards.' " a

Mr. Cobbett was a man distinguished, above all others, for the rapidity and unblushing effrontery with which he veered about in questions, both religious and political, whenever he thought his own worldly interests might be thereby promoted ; so that, on almost every important subject, two directly contrary opinions might be quoted out of his writings. Not the least striking are his opinions and conduct respecting Thomas Paine, the infidel, above referred to. In the third volume of his "Works, published by himself, b Mr. Cobbett thus speaks of Paine and his writings : —

" As to the ' Age of Reason ' itself, it cannot be better described than by saying, that it is as stupid and despicable as its author. The wretch Paine has all his life been employed in leading fools astray from their duty, and, as nothing is more easy, he has often succeeded. His religion is exactly of a piece with his politics ; one inculcates the right of revolting against governments ; and the other, that of revolting against God. But what shall be said of those who, pressed by neither danger nor want, make common exertions to spread his infamous performances among the ignorant part of their countrymen, and thereby sow in their minds the seeds of vice, inquietude, and despair? Deists may find some apology for doing this; but who will dare to become the apologist of those booksellers who, professors of the Christian religion, throw out this bait of blasphemy to catch unwary customers, and, smiling at their simplicity, pocket the dirty pence."

Mr. Cobbett, in 1796, published a Life of Tom Paine, c wherein are the following expressions as referring to that individual : — " Hypocritical monster." d " His notoriously bad character." e " He merited death — at least transportation." f " No language can describe the wickedness of the man."s " Hoary blasphemer." fc

a Bulwer's "Historical Characters," pp. 180, 18G.

c British Museum, press mark 10,855c, London, Svo, 1796.

" Like Judas, he will be remembered by posterity; men will learn to express all that is base, malignant, treacherous, unnatural, and blasphemous by the single monosyllable — Paine." a

Such was Mr. Cobbett's indignant condemnation of Paine the infidel, and of those who spread his writings. But Mr. Cobbett had his reverses in the world. He was condemned by a jury of his country for libel, imprisoned and fined. He suffered under pecuniary difficulties and fled his country. How far these events influenced his opinions I do not care to inquire ; but we do find him a few years afterwards (profiting perhaps by his acquaintance with his new friends, the Komanists, who have long carried on a lucrative trade in sham relics) making a pilgrimage to America, and (to prove to his deluded victims the sincerity of his conversion) bringing back with him, as we have seen, the bones of the man whom he had condemned in most emphatic language as a notorious reprobate. These bones he affected to treat with all the veneration with which an uninformed Eomish devotee hallows the rotten relics which he is taught to believe were once the bones of some favourite saint. This was in the year 1824, the same year in which he commenced his series of tracts to which he gave the title " A History of the Protestant Reformation." This is the man whose book Roman Catholics think it decent to reprint and circulate, and quote on every occasion when they wish to vilify the Reformers, the Reformation, and our Church, and to deceive those who have not the ready means of discovering its misrepresentations. This is the man whom they quote as an historical authority, and not only so, but as a Protestant author.

Protestant he certainly was not. Whether he died, as his professed reverence in the latter years of his life for Thomas Paine would lead one to suppose, a Deist or an Infidel, or whether he was at heart a Papist, we do not profess to know. Certain it is, that the Romish priests exercised a sound discretion in not pressing him to join their ranks openly, in which case his book would have been less mischievous, since they would have been less able to quote it as written by a Protestant. But, whatever religion he might profess, Protestant he was not. Instead of protesting against the errors of the Church of Rome, his great aim, as we shall presently see, in the book which he miscalled " The History of the Protestant Reformation," was to depreciate the motives of Protestants with a virulence and vindictiveness which overreaches itself. He palliates the enormities of the Papists, and even patronises their very doctrines. True it is that he pretends to have undertaken " a fair and honest enquiry," a and to have " written from a bare love of justice," b " that he had no motive in undertaking the work — he could have no motive — but a sincere and disinterested love of justice;" nevertheless he dates his Preface on the 9th July, the anniversary of the day he had been sentenced, as he himself reminds us, " to two years' imprisonment in a felon's gaol, with fine of £1,000 to the King, and at the end of the two years with seven years' bail, himself in £3,000 and two sureties in £1,000 each." It was, as he himself says, on the anniversary of that day that he issued the work in question : — " Knowing the effects which in the end that manuscript must have on these parsons [referring to the clergy of the Church of England], and the great good it must do the nation ; reflecting, feeling, seeing, knowing thus, it is, that I, in justice to our pious, sincere, brave and wise forefathers [referring to the Romanists of the Middle Ages], and in compassion to my suffering countrymen [the then Romanists, who were then under political disabilities], and to the children of us all, I send this little volume forth to the world." d It was under such circumstances, influences, and feelings that Mr. Cobbett launched his volume, which he called, as if in irony, " A History of the Protestant Reformation."

Mr. Cobbett took great pains to impress upon us that he was a Protestant and a member of the Church of England. Such expressions as the following are freely scattered throughout his book. " We Protestants." e " Being as I am a Protestant of the Church of England." f " Born and bred a Protestant of the Church of England, having a wife and family professing the same faith, having the remains of most dearly-beloved parents lying in a Protestant churchyard, and trusting to conjugal or filial piety to place mine by their side." s " We (he says) who belong to this Protestant Church." h And he talks of his " Brother Protestants," l and his "feelings as a Protestant." k

Notwithstanding this, he takes every occasion to use the term Protestant" in derision. Our bishops he calls "Protestant d Introduction, part ii. 52.

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Fathers in God." a He calls our profession of faith "the new religion." "The people, even in London (he says), who were infested with the pestiferous principles of the foreign miscreants that had been brought from the Continent to teach them the new religion;" b and in order to describe a Protestant, he takes Warwick, the Protector during the .reign of Edward VI. " This was (he says), if possible, a more zealous Protestant than the last Protector — that is to say, still more profligate, rapacious, and cruel." c " Good God! (he exclaims) what has this kingdom not suffered from this horrible and hypocritical cry of ' No Popery.'" d " Here we are, with forty sorts of Protestant religions, instead of the one fold in which our forefathers lived for 900 years " e — and so on.

This clearly is the language of a Romanist. But, were it the object of this work, I might show that the differences among Protestants are more on Church government than on doctrine, and that there has been and are more real differences among members of the Roman communion than among us.

In the year 1800 his orthodoxy and Church principles were beyond question. During the excitement caused by the French Revolution, Mr. Cobbett published, under the assumed name of "Peter Porcupine," a series of papers, in which he went to such extreme lengths in villifying all who uttered the slightest objection against the " Protestant Establishment," either in Church or State, that he was described by the late Mr. Wilberforce in these words : " Peter Porcupine is a red-hot anti- Jacobin, most abusively loyal, and most uncharitably orthodox." f And in the second volume of his Works s he extols the Church of England in these words : —

" Convinced as I am, from the experience of America, as well as from history in general, that an Established Church is absolutely necessary to the existence of religion and morality; convinced also that the Church of England, whilst she is an ornament, an honour, and a blessing to the nation, is the principal pillar of the

<" See "Life of Wilberforce," by bis Sons, vol. ii. p. 384, quoted by Sir L. Bulwer.

8 London, 1801, p. 433. In bis Life, written by Himself, 2nd edition, London, 1809, p. 6, be says, "Our religion was tbat of tbe Church of England, to wbicb I have ever remained attached."

throne, I trust I snail never be base enough to decline a combat with her enemies ! "

These are, indeed, brave words, but something had since crossed his path, for, in 1824-1827, in this so-called " History of the Protestant Reformation," he writes of this Church, of which he professed to be a member, in a most contemptuous manner. " She calls herself," he sneeringly says, " a Church by law established. She never omits that part of her title." a He calls the English Church " Cranmer's New Church, as by Law Established;" b " a new thing, imagined by a few singular opinions — established by German bayonets ; " c "a new religion established by law." d And this expression is repeated throughout the book. e He calls our profession of faith " a new system," f "the new religion," s " the new-fangled Protestant Church." h He seeks every occasion to bring our " Book of Common Prayer" into contempt (as he views it) by associating its authorship with the name of Cranmer, thus : — " In addition to his notorious acts of perjury, this maker of the Book of Common Prayer became clearly guilty of high treason." 1 He calls it " our Law Church Prayer Book." k

The following are the motives he attaches to the supporters of our Church: — " Here we have the true cause of all the hostility of the Church of England Clergy towards the Catholics. Take away the possessions, and the hostility would cease to-morrow ; though there is, besides that, a wide, and, on their side, a very disadvantageous difference, between a married clergy and one not married. The former will never have an influence with the people anything like approaching that of the latter. There is, too, the well-known superiority of learning on the side of the Catholic clergy ; to which may be added the notorious fact, that, in fair controversy, the Catholics have always triumphed. Hence, the deep-rooted, the inflexible, the persevering and absolutely implacable hostility of this established Church to the Catholics ; not as men, but as Catholics.' 1 '' l " The Protestant Church," he declares, " was established on the ruins of the Ancient Church by German bayonets, by fines, guillotines, and racks." m He does not hesitate to express his opinion that the Established Church should be swept away: — "It was in this reign [Edward VI.]

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in which this our present Established Church was founded, for though the fabric was overset by Mary, it was raised again by Elizabeth. Now it was that it was made. It was made, and the new worship along with it, by Acts of Parliament, and it now seems to be high time that by similar Acts it should be unmade. It had its very birth in division, disunion and discord, and its life has been worthy of its birth." a "There ought to remain no Church Establishment at all, but that each sect, or sort, ought to be left to provide for his own religious instructions ; because, as long as there is an Establishment, making part of the State, there must always be a contest going on amongst the divers sects for the preference of some kind or other." b

I forbear seeking for motives ; my task is simply to record facts. But, nevertheless, some strong purpose must have operated to produce such a revulsion of feeling, such a reaction, in the opinions of Mr. Cobbett. I give them for what they are worth.

But perhaps the most striking contrast is exhibited in his estimation of the Roman Church and her religion after he had made peace with the ashes of the infidel Tom Paine, — as freely expressed in this " History of the Protestant Reformation," — compared with his previously publicly expressed opinions of the same Church and religion.

In this " History" he tells us that " Catholic means universal, and the religion which takes this epithet, was called universal, because all Christian people of every nation acknowledge it to be the only true religion," and which had been " the only Christian Church." c He adds, that we " cannot deny that this religion," which he always designates as " the Catholic religion," " was the only Christian religion in the world for 1,500 years after the death of Christ ;" de in short, "there was no other Christian church a 202. bPartii. 48. <= 3. d 10.

e The Roman Church consists of the most exclusive and dogmatic sect of Christians existing, and, therefore, the term " Catholic " is wholly inapplicable to her. An entire and unconditional submission is required of all its members to a certain and specific list of dogmas, the principal of which is, that the Pope of Home is the Supreme Bishop, and the Eoman Church Mother and Mistress of all Churches. And her official title is the " Apostolic Roman Church." Contrast this with the requirement of a member of the Anglican Church. He is not hound to accept as doctrine anything tvAick cannot be proved by, or is revealed in, Scripture, the Scriptures alone being the universal basis for doctrine.

known in the world, nor had any other been thought of; and that there could be no good reason for altering the religion of England from Catholic to Protestant." a If Mr. Cobbett really thought so himself, why did he call himself, and profess to be, " a Protestant" and a member of the Chnrch of England?

He continually alludes to " our Catholic forefathers. " b " Can we look back (he says) to the days of our Catholic ancestors, can we think of their lofty tone, and of the submission instantly produced by their threats, without sighing, Alas ! those clays are never to return." " "When I consider the long, long triumph of calumny over the religion of those to whom we owe all that we possess that is great and renowned," &c. d " The religion under which England had been so great and so happy, for ages so

numerous, that religion of charity and hospitality " e

Charity, he maintains, is a peculiar attribute of the Roman religion, and that it is excluded from ours by the very nature of Protestantism : he says —

" Accordingly, we see that it is necessarily excluded by the very nature of all Protestant establishments ; that is to say in reality ; for, the name of charity is retained by some of these establishments ; but the substance no where exists. The Catholic establishment interweaves deeds of constant and substantial charity with the faith itself. It makes the two inseparable. The Douay Catechism, which the Protestant parsons so much abuse, says, that ' the first fruit of the Holy Ghost is charity.' And, then, it tells us what charity is ; namely, * to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to visit and ransom captives, to harbour the harbourless, to visit the sick, to bury the dead.' Can yon guess, my friends, why fat Protestant parsons rail so loudly against this ivicked Douay Catechism?' It is in the nature of man to love all this. This is what ' the gates of hell will never prevail against.' This is what our fathers believed, and what they acted upon; ancTthis it was that produced in them that benevolent disposition which, thank God, has not yet been wholly extirpated from the breasts of their descendants." " The history (he says) of the Church of England down to the time of the Reformation is a matter of deep interest to us. A mere look at it — a bare sketch of the principal facts, will show how false, how unjust, how a 25. b 29. c 454. d 478. « 341.

ungrateful those have been who haye vilified the Catholic Church, its Popes, its monks, and its priests." a

He grayely tells us, " as a Protestant," that, on the accession of Mary, " England was once more a Catholic country. She was restored to the ' fold of Christ; ' " b but, " a babel of religions had been introduced by Cranmer and his crew." c He lays it down that there can be but one true religion. d " Two true religions, two true creeds, differing from each other, cannot," he says, " exist." e And his inference, and only inference, is, that the Roman religion is the only true religion. But he does not content himself with these generalities, for he enters into particulars. He advocates the Papal supremacy in this country : — " The Pope was a foreigner exercising spiritual power in England ; and this the hypocrites [the Reformers'] pretended was a degradation to the King and country." f He declares that " this so much abused Papal supremacy was a most salutary thing." « He declares the Church to be founded on Peter, who was selected by Christ to be the head of the Church, and he then advances the old popish arguments founded on this fallacy, 11 and of St. Peter's supposed residence in Rome ; and that the supremacy of the Bishops of Rome, as successors of Peter, " was always acknowledged by the Church ; that is to say, by all the Christians then in the world;" 1 that the Scriptures tell us the Church was one, and that that Church was the Church of St. Peter. k He refers approvingly to " confessions to priests, absolutions, indulgences, masses, and monasteries." 1 He elaborately defends the celibacy of the clergy, by all the trite arguments common to the subject adopted by Dr. Milner and others ; m and he laments the fact of " the mass being abolished, and that there was no longer to be an altar, but a table in its stead." n And he runs down the Protestant privilege of " private judgment and interpretation of Scripture." ° " What right," he exclaims, " had Luther to make a new religion, and then Calvin another new one, and Cranmer one different from both these, and then ' Good Bess ' to make an improvement on Cranmer's ? " p Such, then, being the deliberately expressed opinions of Mr. Cobbett, in 1824 to 1827, which were not afterwards repudiated, we may safely conclude that he was not a Protestant, and this will