In the crime of heresy, thanked be God," said
the bishops in 1529, "there hath no notable person fallen in our time;" no
chief priest, chief ruler, or learned Pharisee--not one. "Truth it is that
certain apostate friars and monks, lewd priests, bankrupt merchants,
vagabonds and lewd idle fellows of corrupt nature, have embraced the
abominable and erroneous opinions lately sprung in Germany, and by them
have been some seduced in simplicity and ignorance. Against these, if
judgment have been exercised according to the laws of the realm, we be
without blame. If we have been too remiss or slack, we shall gladly do our
duty from henceforth."[489] Such were the first Protestants in the eyes of
their superiors. On one side was wealth, rank, dignity, the weight of
authority, the majority of numbers, the prestige of centuries; here too
were the phantom legions of superstition and cowardice; and here were all
the worthier influences so pre-eminently English, which lead wise men to
shrink from change, and to cling to things established, so long as one
stone of them remains upon another, This was the army of conservatism.
Opposed to it were a little band of enthusiasts, armed only with truth and
fearlessness; "weak things of the world," about to do battle in God's name;
and it was to be seen whether God or the world was the stronger. They were
armed, I say, with the truth. It was that alone which could have given them
victory in so unequal a struggle. They had returned to the essential
fountain of life; they re-asserted the principle which has lain at the root
of all religions, whatever their name or outward form, which once burnt
with divine lustre in that Catholicism which was now to pass away; the
fundamental axiom of all real life, that the service which man owes to God
is not the service of words or magic forms, or ceremonies or opinions; but
the service of holiness, of purity, of obedience to the everlasting laws of
duty.

When we look through the writings of Latimer, the apostle of the English
Reformation, when we read the depositions against the martyrs, and the
lists of their crimes against the established faith, we find no opposite
schemes of doctrine, no "plans of salvation;" no positive system of
theology which it was held a duty to believe; these things were of later
growth, when it became again necessary to clothe the living spirit in a
perishable body. We find only an effort to express again the old
exhortation of the