hat finally was known as the
Thirty-nine Articles, and was the true founder of the English Church, as
that Church has existed for more than three centuries,--neither Roman
nor Puritan, but "half-way between Rome and Geneva;" a compromise, and
yet a Church of great vitality, and endeared to the hearts of the
English people. Northern Germany--the scene of the stupendous triumphs
of Luther--is and has been, since the time of Frederick the Great, the
hot-bed of rationalistic inquiries; and the Genevan as well as the
French and Swiss churches which Calvin controlled have become cold, with
a dreary and formal Protestantism, without poetry or life. But the
Church of England has survived two revolutions and all the changes of
human thought, and is still a mighty power, decorous, beautiful,
conservative, yet open to all the liberalizing influences of an age of
science and philosophy. Cranmer, though a scholastic, seems to have
perceived that nothing is more misleading and uncertain and
unsatisfactory than any truth pushed out to its severest logical
conclusions without reference to other truths which have for their
support the same divine authority. It is not logic which has built up
the most enduring institutions, but common-sense and plain truths, and
appeals to human consciousness,--the _cogito, ergo sum_, without whose
approval most systems have perished. _In mediis tutissimus ibis_, is not
indeed an agreeable maxim to zealots and partisans and dialectical
logicians, but it seems to be induced from the varied experiences of
human life and the history of different ages and nations, and applies to
all the mixed sciences, like government and political economy, as well
as to church institutions.

As Cromwell made his fortune by advising the King to assume the headship
of the Church in England, so Cranmer's rise is to be traced to his
advice to Henry to appeal to the decision of universities whether or not
he could be legally divorced from Catharine, since the Pope--true to the
traditions of the Catholic Church, or from fear of Charles V.--would not
grant a dispensation. All this business was a miserable quibble, a
tissue of scholastic technicalities. But it answered the ends of
Cranmer. The schools decided for the King, and a great injustice and
heartless cruelty was done to a worthy and loyal woman, and a great
insult offered to the Church and to the Emperor Charles of Germany, who
was a nephew of the Spanish Princess and Engli