election. Those bishops,' continued the fraternal manifesto, 'who for the sake of their misdoings were deposed, shall never come again to their episcopal governments, sees, or the possessions of their sees, nor any others like them; but instead shall be made other Christianlike bishops or superintendents, that can teach and preach the Holy Gospel and God's Word and the holy Christian faith' (p. 1025). So fell the ancient episcopate of Denmark, unpitied and unreverenced. Yet there were some things in which they might have expected both reverence and pity. Too patriotic to submit to papal encroachments on the one hand, too catholicminded to go with the excesses of reform on the other, they earned the scornful remark of Christian III., that they were 'neither papist nor evangelical.' The taunt might well be considered an encomium, were it not that, all along, interest dictated their action at least as much as conviction. It is true that they were never fairly dealt with, that they were reckoned as enemies throughout, that they were never invited to co-operate in the regeneration of their Church, that their most sacred rights and duties were invaded in the most offensive manner possible. But it is true that the bishops of 1536 were nobles first and bishops after-nobles by birth and prejudice as well as by position. They probably had no intention to neglect the spiritual side of their office, yet they did not understand it, and (like their relatives, both alive and dead) regarded the office as a prize, lucrative and dignified; and their whole policy was distorted by the misconception. Men to whom the religious interest was supreme would either have gone out to meet the reforming movement, and brought it into ways of sobriety, or would have sacrificed all in combating it. But it is easier to point out the way in which great opportunities are lost than to take them when they are offered. Rönnov was the only one of the prelates who never came out of his captivity. He died in 1544, after his place of confinement had been often changed, in Copenhagen Castle, a hated prisoner still. Ove Bilde, as well as his namesake of Lund, and Gyldenstjerne of Odense, was set free within twelve months, on promise of not attempting to regain his office or to combat the new ecclesiastical régime. As has been said already, he at last went so far as to conform to that régime, and when he was buried among his forefathers in the Priory of Antvorskov, Christian III. followed him to the grave. The others were kept some little while longer under restraint, but were released on the same conditions, and re ceived, as did those already named, some secularized monastery or other fragment of the Church property to console. themselves with. In the case of Oluf Munk, the young Elect of Ribe, was added the curious condition that he should enter the married state, with which he complied. Knud Gyldenstjerne, without compulsion, did the same. There was no one of sufficiently commanding personality among the native preachers for Christian III. to entrust with the work of introducing his new order. He turned to 'the worthy Father, Dr. Martin Luther, by whom God, in His loving kindness and compassion, has sent us the holy Gospel.' Luther, though a partisan of Christian's imprisoned cousin, had already written to the King to express his delight at the 'extirpation of the bishops, because they would not cease to persecute God's Word and to confound the temporal government.' He now sent Bugenhagen (since Melanchthon could not be spared) to be the apostle of the new Church. Bugenhagen arrived at Copenhagen in July 1537. To betoken the King's sense of the greatness of this legation a latere, Bugenhagen was invited to take the place of the old archbishops of Lund, and to perform the coronation of Christian and his Queen. A few days later, though only a presbyter himself, he solemnly consecrated to their office the seven new superintendents, or bishops, as the people persisted in calling them. Some of these men had themselves undertaken before to make presbyters of others; now they were raised to their novel episcopate by one of their own order, whose only claim to be above them was that he came from Wittenberg and was appointed to do it by the King. From that unhappy ordination is derived the authority of all the present Danish ministers. It was not, on the one hand, a case in which no true episcopal consecration could be had; in all probability a very slight pressure would have brought the older bishops to consecrate Gyldenstjerne, Rönnov, and others who might have carried the ancient succession on. Nor was it, on the other hand, a case of deliberate preference for presbyterian ordination, as in some countries; the men now set apart—or almost all of them—were already presbyters, and they were to be made something more, and for the future to have sole authority to ordain. The act was intended distinctly to mark a new beginning—new like the Gospel' which accompanied it. There have not been wanting men in the later Danish Church who, in the revival of the study of antiquity, have felt the defects of their ecclesiastical polity, and have desired to remedy them. This was for a time the case with Grundtvig, the man who more than any other in this century awoke in the hearts of his countrymen a new love for the historic faith; and his knowledge of England led him to hope that the help might come from us. It is well known that the present esteemed Bishop' in Iceland, on his appointment to that office, besought the King to allow him to seek consecration from the English bishops; but Martensen, the author of the Dogmatics and Ethics so deservedly popular among us, vehemently opposed the design, which he regarded as a step towards Catholicism,' and likely to hinder his favourite scheme of a fusion between Lutheranism and the 'Reformed.' Perhaps, also, as Primate of the Danish Church, Martensen shrank from the humiliation which seemed to be involved; and, being an imperious man and all powerful at Court, he succeeded in crushing the project, which in the consecration sermon he unsparingly denounced. But a more Catholic-minded school is making its way in the country, with a deeper value for the lessons of history, foremost among whom may be named Dr. Frederick Nielsen, the erudite and able Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Copenhagen. Though he has never visited our country, he is acquainted with every phase of our modern movements, and reads more English theological works than many English priests find time to read. Professor Nielsen makes no secret of his desire for a closer relation between his Church and ours, or of his willingness to see such reforms effected in his own Church as would make it possible for the English bishops to confer the succession upon occupants of Danish sees. What reforms, doctrinal and practical, would be necessary as an antecedent condition need not here be discussed; but if ever the isolation of the English Church is to be broken down, and communion to be established between her and any national Church abroad, there is no quarter to which she might more hopefully look than to the Scandinavian Churches. No other nation is so near to our own in temperament as the Danish; no other Church so near in practical feeling and modes of thought. The readers of this Review may well be asked to pray for the opening of a way by which, without compromising any principle which we rightly prize, the English Church might communicate from the fulness of her inheritance to a noble and zealous society of Christians which has in some ways been not equally blessed. ART. IX. THE MARIAN PERSECUTION. History of the Church of England from the Abolition of the M.A., Vicar of Warkworth, Hon. Canon of Carlisle. CANON DIXON has devoted a volume of 737 pages to he narration of the history of the Church during the reign of Mary. This amount of space may seem excessive, but the period is one of such exceptional interest, and the mass of materials to be handled is so vast, that we are not able to say that it has been treated at too great length. On the contrary, we hold that the feeling of the readers of this volume will be one of thankfulness and gratitude to the industrious writer who has brought together so large a portion of most interesting matter, and who has, upon the whole, set it forth with lucidity and intelligence. No doubt there are some faults of arrangement, and exceptions may here and there be taken to the style in which the narrative is related, and to the use of barbarous Latinized words; but these minor blemishes are completely obscured by the real value of the work, and by the excellent spirit of candour and fairness which pervades it. Many will hold it to be a fault that Canon Dixon is too calm and dispassionate in the face of the horrible scenes of fanaticism and cruelty which he has to relate, but the business of the historian is to state facts clearly and fully, rather than to enlarge upon their character and to excite passion by the recital. Neither is it fitting, even when one is most inclined to write strongly, to neglect to take into account opposite views, or to shut the eyes to mitigating circumstances or elements of doubtfulness as regards the exact truth of a narration. Others will quarrel with the book for not being sufficiently sceptical, for giving credit to received and generally admitted opinions; for allowing any amount of weight to that which the world in general has agreed to believe and honour. Strange to say, this is distinctly the case with many modern histories. The writers appear never to be satisfied unless they are overturning, or trying to overturn, all previous conceptions. History with them is nothing if not new. A few ill-digested records, many of which are valueless, are held sufficient to overset all previous theories, and the pride of the writer is flattered by the self-satisfied notion that he at last has set the world right. Now, in Canon Dixon's volume we can find nothing of this. If he is judicially calm he is certainly not inordinately sceptical. He is courageous enough to use John Foxe, Strype, and Burnet, without insinuating that because these writers have made a statement it must of necessity be suspicious. He gives the writers on both sides in these troubled times a fair and impartial hearing; and his large acquaintance with collateral authorities, and the exhaustive search which he has made among the records and the rare books belonging to the period, make his judgment most valuable. The scope and character of the work, and the ruling idea in the mind of the historian, had best be described in his own words. 'I have exhibited the great struggle of this reign from an Anglican aspect, and represented it as a battle between two books. This view, apparent in the narratives of the confessors and martyrs, has been kept out of sight not only by the general historians, who were perhaps little likely to preserve or present it, but by the ecclesiastical historians also, whose intelligence in the subject might be expected to be keener; so that, in the three centuries that have elapsed since the historian of the persecution made his collections, there is not a writer who has cared to declare with any stress that the English martyrs died in defence of the English Prayer Book. The doctrinal subject of contention, the Sacramental controversy, has overshadowed all others, and if any of the historians makes mention of the issue, on which the whole contest depended, whether the English or the Latin service should prevail, it is in a cursory and unimpressive manner' (p. 732). The assertion here made will probably be found to need some qualification. Many of the martyrs, no doubt, were fully prepared to contend for the English Prayer Book; others, like Hooper and the Frankfort exiles, desired a 'further reformation.' We are very well content, however, to take Canon Dixon's view, as applying in the main to the body of Reformers persecuted to the death in this murderous reign. They took their stand upon the laws of the land. So confident were they of the legality of their position that at the beginning of Mary's reign they actually attempted to prosecute those who set up the Latin Mass; and a judge, who charged the jury, as he was bound to do, to find according to the existing laws, is said to have been rebuked by the Lord Chancellor because he had not rather paid regard to the Queen's intentions, indicated in her proceedings' (p. 25). Canon Dixon is somewhat amusingly at a loss how to designate the two parties which were then striving together within the Church of England. He has invented the singular |