he Church.[140]

The great question now was, how an alteration could be prepared in a
legal manner, and how far it would be possible to maintain in this the
constitution of the realm in its relation to the states of Europe. On
the ground of the supremacy and of a precedent of Henry VIII, they
began with a resolution to despatch commissions throughout the realm,
to revive the suppressed Protestant sympathies; the precedent was
found in the ordinances that had once proceeded from Thomas Cromwell,
just as if they had not in the least been annulled by what had
happened since, but simply set aside by party feeling and neglect.
They were to enquire whether, as therein ordered, the bishops had
preached against the Pope's usurpation, the parish priests had taught
men to regard not outward observances but fulfilment of duty as the
real 'good works,' and had laboured to diminish feast-days and
pilgrimages. Above all, images to which superstitious reverence was
paid were at last to be actually removed: the young were to be really
taught the chief points of the faith in English, a chapter of the
Bible should be read every Sunday, and Erasmus' Paraphrase employed to
explain it. In place of the sermon was to come one of the Homilies
which had been published under the authority of the Archbishop and
King. For this last ordinance also authority was found in an
injunction of Henry VIII. Archbishop Cranmer, whose work they are,
establishes in them the two principles, on which he had already
proceeded in 1536, one that Holy Scripture contains all that it is
necessary for men to know, the other that forgiveness of sins depends
only on the merits of the Redeemer and on faith in Him. On this
depends absolutely the possibility of rooting out of men's minds the
belief in the binding force of Tradition, and the hierarchic views as
to the merit of good works. The Archbishop's views were promoted by
eloquent and zealous preachers such as Matthew Parker, John Knox, Hugh
Latimer; more than all by the last, who had been released from the
Tower, weak in body but with unimpaired vigour of spirit. The fact of
his having maintained these doctrines in the time of persecution, his
earnest way and manner, and his venerable old age doubled the effect
of his discourses.

No direct alteration could be thought of so long as the Six Articles
still existed with their severe threats of punishment. In the
Parliament elected under the influence of the new governm