lical institution; and that by the episcopal authority all the three orders are conferred, thus conforming to the practice of the ancient Church, which never accounted an ordination valid that was performed by persons beneath the episcopal character. They distinguished also the two higher orders of bishops and priests; and while they pronounced the forms of ordination, as mentioned in Scripture, to be only the imposition of hands and prayer, they directed that two bishops should expressly declare, that the person presented is to be consecrated to their own order; and to him are accordingly applied more questions by the archbishop, than are mentioned in the office for ordaining priests, implying the superior authority of one who was to exercise discipline, and to govern a diocese. They rejected the inferior orders of acolyths, sub-deacons, and readers, which had been the provision of modern ages, and were still retained in the Church of Rome; and they discontinued some unmeaning ceremonies. By this reformed ritual Ponet was the first prelate 'consecrated. He was a scholar of no ordinary character; the intimate friend of Ridley and of Ascham; as a preacher, and as an author, both in Latin and English, eminently promoting the Reformation. He had now published his Defence of the Marriages of Priests; which in the time of Mary was

1 To the see of Rochester, Ridley being translated to that of London.

2

abused, in a work that bore the name of 'Martin in its title-page, but of which Ponet, in a reply to it, pronounced Gardiner, and Dr. Smith, the deceitful adversary of Cranmer, if not other Romanists also, the authors. Smith had written an especial treatise, indeed, to maintain the law of celibacy on the clergy by the Church of Rome, which Peter Martyr had impugned. He printed it at Louvain, whither he had fled. Having however recanted, soon after the accession of Edward, what as a Romanist he had said of the mass, he now was willing to retract what he had written on the law of priestly celibacy; acknowledging, in a letter to Cranmer, "3his sudden and unadvised departing from his grace over the sea; and desiring, of his charity towards them that repent of their ill acts, to forgive him all the wrong he had done, and to obtain for him the king's pardon, upon the receipt of which he would return again home, and within half a year (at the uttermost) afterward write a book de sacerdotum connubiis, &c. a Latin book (on the marriage of priests) that should be a just satisfaction for any that he had written against the same." To this letter the archbishop paid no regard; though Smith threatens in it also to attack his book on the Sacrament. The writer of it remained in exile. Burnet has given an account of com

1 See before, vol. i. p. 5.

? At Paul's Cross, 15th May, 1547.

3 Letter to Cranmer, printed by Foxe in his Life of Latimer. Hist. Ref. under the 1551. year

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1

plaints having at this time been preferred against him by the University of Oxford to the Council, and of his having been imprisoned till he obtained his release by means of Cranmer, to whom he sent an acknowledgment of the kindness with a reference also to the connubial topic. But the historian has here 1 mistakenly introduced Cranmer into a transaction, which passed only between Smith and archbishop Parker some years afterwards; when Smith, having again returned to Romanism in the reign of Mary, was at the beginning of Elizabeth's 2 certainly incarcerated, but on giving security for his good conduct was by Parker restored to liberty, and presently again fled from his country. Meantime, with thanks to Parker, he hypocritically observed" that he had written his book de cœlibatu sacerdotum to try the truth out, not to the intent that it should be printed, as it was against his will. Would to God (he said) I had never made it; because I took then for my chief ground, that the priests of England made a vow (of celibacy) when they were made (priests,) which now I perceive is not true." Anthony Wood, in his Life of Smith, has adopted the mistake of Burnet; relating that

'This, and another letter, a learned correspondent of Burnet assured him, were addressed to Parker, and not to Cranmer; which, if the historian doubted, he offered to make very evident. They are among the MSS. C. C. Camb. Hist. Ref. vol. iii. Corrections.

2 A. Wood, Ath. Ox. Smith.

MSS. C. C. Camb. Burnet, ii. Rec. B. i. No. 54, as if to Cranmer, but it is certainly to Parker.

Smith thus wrote to Cranmer, because he had heard of collections made by the archbishop in opposition to his book. Such indeed were the collections of Parker, whose Defence of the Marriages of Priests, especially levelled against Martin's treatise, appeared in 1562. Burnet considers Cranmer when he should have named Parker, I must further observe, as "inquiring after a manuscript of the Epistles of Ignatius." But the historian assigns no reason for such an inquiry; which however, as it relates to a subject that had so much engaged the attention of both the archbishops, as well as of the foreign Reformers, the ancient usage of the Christian Church in allowing the priesthood to marry, claims especial notice. The charge of these Epistles having been corruptly printed had, perhaps, reached the ears of Parker. Martin in his treatise, in 1554, brought such an accusation against the foreign friends of Cranmer. "The Germans," said he, " corrupting Ignatius, have put in him St. Paul for a married man; whereas I have seen other written books to the contrary: And that no man may think me to speak an untruth, I report me to the testimony of a number of good students that have been fellows of Magdalen College in Oxford, whether they have not in their library an old written copy of Ignatius, except some brother hath of late

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1 Treatise, &c. 1554. sign. Z. iii. b.

2 This illiberal insinuation appears to be overthrown by the statement, long afterwards, of such a manuscript then being in the library of Magdalen College. See the Catal. Libb. MSS.

years stolen it away, where St. Paul's name is not written." This assertion the very learned Dr. James, in his Introduction to Divinity, published at Oxford in 1625, has denied. The name of St. Paul as a married man, "is, or was, extant," he says, "in this manuscript." He had thus seen it also in other manuscripts. The statement is, that1 St. Peter and St. Paul, and other Apostles, were married. "2 That this passage, was not corrupted since the Reformation, appears from various editions made before that time: And that it is genuine, may be seen in Usher, Dissert. in Ignatium, c. 17, and Cotelerius, Annot. in locum."

A brief, but important literary labour of the archbishop had now been circulated, maintaining the great principle of the Reformation, that the whole of God's Word is contained in Scripture, or the Written Word. Tradition, called by Romanists the Unwritten Word of God, by them was held of equal authority with the Written Word. Cranmer, therefore, collected sufficient proofs against this elevation of tradition to a level with inspiration; and exposed many of the Un

Ang. et Heb. Ox. 1697, No. 2217, Codices MSS. Coll. S. Mariæ Magdalenæ.

1 Petrus, et Paulus, et reliqui Apostoli, nuptiis fuerunt associati, &c. Ignat. ad Philadelph. edit. Vossii.

Essay on the Law of Celibacy imposed on the Clergy of the Roman Catholic Church, by the Rev. J. Hawkins, Worcester, pp. 9, 10.