Edith Wharton - "Ethan Frome"

Davis - "The Reporter Who Made Himself King"

Rabindranath Tagore - "Stray Birds"

Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.) - "Short Stories for English Courses"

Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1

T >> Thomas Babington Macaulay >> Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1




The fact is that both pleas are worthless alike. If such
arguments are to pass current, it will be easy to prove that
there was never such a thing as religious persecution since the
creation. For there never was a religious persecution in which
some odious crime was not, justly or unjustly, said to be
obviously deducible from the doctrines of the persecuted party.
We might say, that the Caesars did not persecute the Christians;
that they only punished men who were charged, rightly or wrongly,
with burning Rome, and with committing the foulest abominations
in secret assemblies; and that the refusal to throw frankincense
on the altar of Jupiter was not the crime, but only evidence of
the crime. We might say, that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was
intended to extirpate, not a religious sect, but a political
party. For, beyond all doubt, the proceedings of the Huguenots,
from the conspiracy of Amboise to the battle of Moncontour, had
given much more trouble to the French monarchy than the Catholics
have ever given to the English monarchy since the Reformation;
and that too with much less excuse.

The true distinction is perfectly obvious. To punish a man
because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed,
though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution.
To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some
doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who
hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime is
persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.

When Elizabeth put Ballard and Babington to death, she was not
persecuting. Nor should we have accused her government of
persecution for passing any law, however severe, against overt
acts of sedition. But to argue that, because a man is a Catholic,
he must think it right to murder a heretical sovereign, and that
because he thinks it right, he will attempt to do it, and then,
to found on this conclusion a law for punishing him as if he had
done it, is plain persecution.

If, indeed, all men reasoned in the same manner on the same data,
and always did what they thought it their duty to do, this mode
of dispensing punishment might be extremely judicious. But as
people who agree about premises often disagree about conclusions,
and as no man in the world acts up to his own standard of right,
there are two enormous gaps in the logic by which alone penalties
for opinions can be defended. The doctrine of reprobation, in the
judgment of many very able men, follows by syllogistic necessity
from the doctrine of election. Others conceive that the
Antinomian heresy directly follows from the doctrine of
reprobation; and it is very generally thought that licentiousness
and cruelty of the worst description are likely to be the fruits,
as they often have been the fruits, of Antinomian opinions. This
chain of reasoning, we think, is as perfect in all its parts as
that which makes out a Papist to be necessarily a traitor. Yet it
would be rather a strong measure to hang all the Calvinists, on
the ground that if they were spared, they would infallibly commit
all the atrocities of Matthias and Knipperdoling. For, reason the
matter as we may, experience shows us that a man may believe in
election without believing in reprobation, that he may believe in
reprobation without being an Antinomian, and that he may be an
Antinomian without being a bad citizen. Man, in short, is so
inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his
belief to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.

We do not believe that every Englishman who was reconciled to the
Catholic Church would, as a necessary consequence, have thought
himself justified in deposing or assassinating Elizabeth. It is
not sufficient to say that the convert must have acknowledged the
authority of the Pope, and that the Pope had issued a bull
against the Queen. We know through what strange loopholes the
human mind contrives to escape, when it wishes to avoid a
disagreeable inference from an admitted proposition. We know how
long the Jansenists contrived to believe the Pope infallible in
matters of doctrine, and at the same time to believe doctrines
which he pronounced to be heretical. Let it pass, however, that
every Catholic in the kingdom thought that Elizabeth might be
lawfully murdered. Still the old maxim, that what is the business
of everybody is the business of nobody, is particularly likely to
hold good in a case in which a cruel death is the almost
inevitable consequence of making any attempt.

Of the ten thousand clergymen of the Church of England, there is
scarcely one who would not say that a man who should leave his
country and friends to preach the Gospel among savages, and who
should, after labouring indefatigably without any hope of reward,
terminate his life by martyrdom, would deserve the warmest
admiration. Yet we can doubt whether ten of the ten thousand ever
thought of going on such an expedition. Why should we suppose
that conscientious motives, feeble as they are constantly found
to be in a good cause, should be omnipotent for evil? Doubtless
there was many a jolly Popish priest in the old manor-houses of
the northern counties, who would have admitted, in theory, the
deposing power of the Pope, but who would not have been ambitious
to be stretched on the rack, even though it were to be used,
according to the benevolent proviso of Lord Burleigh, "as
charitably as such a thing can be," or to be hanged, drawn, and
quartered, even though, by that rare indulgence which the Queen,
of her special grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion,
sometimes extended to very mitigated cases, he were allowed a
fair time to choke before the hangman began to grabble in his
entrails.

But the laws passed against the Puritans had not even the
wretched excuse which we have been considering. In this case, the
cruelty was equal, the danger, infinitely less. In fact, the
danger was created solely by the cruelty. But it is superfluous
to press the argument. By no artifice of ingenuity can the stigma
of persecution, the worst blemish of the English Church, be
effaced or patched over. Her doctrines, we well know, do not tend
to intolerance. She admits the possibility of salvation out of
her own pale. But this circumstance, in itself honourable to her,
aggravates the sin and the shame of those who persecuted in her
name. Dominic and De Montfort did not, at least, murder and
torture for differences of opinion which they considered as
trifling. It was to stop an infection which, as they believed,
hurried to certain perdition every soul which it seized, that
they employed their fire and steel. The measures of the English
government with respect to the Papists and Puritans sprang from a
widely different principle. If those who deny that the founders
of the Church were guilty of religious persecution mean only that
the founders of the Church were not influenced by any religious
motive, we perfectly agree with them. Neither the penal code of
Elizabeth, nor the more hateful system by which Charles the
Second attempted to force Episcopacy on the Scotch, had an origin
so noble. The cause is to be sought in some circumstances which
attended the Reformation in England, circumstances of which the
effects long continued to be felt, and may in some degree be
traced even at the present day.

In Germany, in France, in Switzerland, and in Scotland, the
contest against the Papal power was essentially a religious
contest. In all those countries, indeed, the cause of the
Reformation, like every other great cause, attracted to itself
many supporters influenced by no conscientious principle, many
who quitted the Established Church only because they thought her
in danger, many who were weary of her restraints, and many who
were greedy for her spoils. But it was not by these adherents
that the separation was there conducted. They were welcome
auxiliaries; their support was too often purchased by unworthy
compliances; but, however exalted in rank or power, they were not
the leaders in the enterprise. Men of a widely different
description, men who redeemed great infirmities and errors by
sincerity, disinterestedness, energy and courage, men who, with
many of the vices of revolutionary chiefs and of polemic divines,
united some of the highest qualities of apostles, were the real
directors. They might be violent in innovation and scurrilous in
controversy. They might sometimes act with inexcusable severity
towards opponents, and sometimes connive disreputably at the
vices of powerful allies. But fear was not in them, nor
hypocrisy, nor avarice, nor any petty selfishness. Their one
great object was the demolition of the idols and the purification
of the sanctuary. If they were too indulgent to the failings of
eminent men from whose patronage they expected advantage to the
church, they never flinched before persecuting tyrants and
hostile armies. For that theological system to which they
sacrificed the lives of others without scruple, they were ready
to throw away their own lives without fear. Such were the authors
of the great schism on the Continent and in the northern part of
this island. The Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse,
the Prince of Conde and the King of Navarre, the Earl of Moray
and the Earl of Morton, might espouse the Protestant opinions, or
might pretend to espouse them; but it was from Luther, from
Calvin, from Knox, that the Reformation took its character.

England has no such names to show; not that she wanted men of
sincere piety, of deep learning, of steady and adventurous
courage. But these were thrown into the background. Elsewhere men
of this character were the principals. Here they acted a
secondary part. Elsewhere worldliness was the tool of zeal. Here
zeal was the tool of worldliness. A King, whose character may be
best described by saying that he was despotism itself
personified, unprincipled ministers, a rapacious aristocracy, a
servile Parliament, such were the instruments by which England
was delivered from the yoke of Rome. The work which had been
begun by Henry, the murderer of his wives, was continued by
Somerset, the murderer of his brother, and completed by
Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest. Sprung from brutal passion,
nurtured by selfish policy, the Reformation in England displayed
little of what had, in other countries, distinguished it;
unflinching and unsparing devotion, boldness of speech, and
singleness of eye. These were indeed to be found; but it was in
the lower ranks of the party which opposed the authority of Rome,
in such men as Hooper, Latimer, Rogers, and Taylor. Of those who
had any important share in bringing the Reformation about, Ridley
was perhaps the only person who did not consider it as a mere
political job. Even Ridley did not play a very prominent part.
Among the statesmen and prelates who principally gave the tone to
the religious changes, there is one, and one only, whose conduct
partiality itself can attribute to any other than interested
motives. It is not strange, therefore, that his character should
have been the subject of fierce controversy. We need not say that
we speak of Cranmer.

Mr. Hallam has been severely censured for saying with his usual
placid severity, that, "if we weigh the character of this prelate
in an equal balance, he will appear far indeed removed from the
turpitude imputed to him, by his enemies; yet not entitled to any
extraordinary veneration." We will venture to expand the sense of
Mr. Hallam, and to comment on it thus:--If we consider Cranmer
merely as a statesman, he will not appear a much worse man than
Wolsey, Gardiner, Cromwell, or Somerset. But, when an attempt is
made to set him up as a saint, it is scarcely possible for any
man of sense who knows the history of the times to preserve his
gravity. If the memory of the archbishop had been left to find
its own place, he would have soon been lost among the crowd which
is mingled

"A quel cattivo coro
Degli angeli, che non furon ribelli,
Ne fur fedeli a Dio, per se foro."

And the only notice which it would have been necessary to take of
his name would have been

"Non ragioniam di lui; ma guarda, e passa."

But, since his admirers challenge for him a place in the noble
army of martyrs, his claims require fuller discussion.

The origin of his greatness, common enough in the scandalous
chronicles of courts, seems strangely out of place in a
hagiology. Cranmer rose into favour by serving Henry in the
disgraceful affair of his first divorce. He promoted the marriage
of Anne Boleyn with the King. On a frivolous pretence he
pronounced that marriage null and void. On a pretence, if
possible still more frivolous, he dissolved the ties which
bound the shameless tyrant to Anne of Cleves. He attached
himself to Cromwell while the fortunes of Cromwell flourished.
He voted for cutting off Cromwell's head without a trial,
when the tide of royal favour turned. He conformed backwards
and forwards as the King changed his mind. He assisted,
while Henry lived, in condemning to the flames those who
denied the doctrine of transubstantiation. He found out,
as soon as Henry was dead, that the doctrine was false.
He was, however, not at a loss for people to burn. The
authority of his station and of his grey hairs was employed to
overcome the disgust with which an intelligent and virtuous child
regarded persecution. Intolerance is always bad. But the
sanguinary intolerance of a man who thus wavered in his creed
excites a loathing, to which it is difficult to give vent without
calling foul names. Equally false to political and to religious
obligations, the primate was first the tool of Somerset, and then
the tool of Northumberland. When the Protector wished to put his
own brother to death, without even the semblance of a trial, he
found a ready instrument in Cranmer. In spite of the canon law,
which forbade a churchman to take any part in matters of blood,
the archbishop signed the warrant for the atrocious sentence.
When Somerset had been in his turn destroyed, his destroyer
received the support of Cranmer in a wicked attempt to change the
course of the succession.

The apology made for him by his admirers only renders his conduct
more contemptible. He complied, it is said, against his better
judgment, because he could not resist the entreaties of Edward. A
holy prelate of sixty, one would think, might be better employed
by the bedside of a dying child, than in committing crimes at the
request of the young disciple. If Cranmer had shown half as much
firmness when Edward requested him to commit treason as he had
before shown when Edward requested him not to commit murder, he
might have saved the country from one of the greatest misfortunes
that it ever underwent. He became, from whatever motive, the
accomplice of the worthless Dudley. The virtuous scruples of
another young and amiable mind were to be overcome. As Edward had
been forced into persecution, Jane was to be seduced into
treason. No transaction in our annals is more unjustifiable than
this. If a hereditary title were to be respected, Mary possessed
it. If a parliamentary title were preferable, Mary possessed that
also. If the interest of the Protestant religion required a
departure from the ordinary rule of succession, that interest
would have been best served by raising Elizabeth to the throne.
If the foreign relations of the kingdom were considered, still
stronger reasons might be found for preferring Elizabeth to Jane.
There was great doubt whether Jane or the Queen of Scotland had
the better claim; and that doubt would, in all probability, have
produced a war both with Scotland and with France, if the project
of Northumberland had not been blasted in its infancy. That
Elizabeth had a better claim than the Queen of Scotland was
indisputable. To the part which Cranmer, and unfortunately some
better men than Cranmer, took in this most reprehensible scheme,
much of the severity with which the Protestants were afterwards
treated must in fairness be ascribed.

The plot failed; Popery triumphed; and Cranmer recanted. Most
people look on his recantation as a single blemish on an
honourable life, the frailty of an unguarded moment. But, in
fact, his recantation was in strict accordance with the system on
which he had constantly acted. It was part of a regular habit. It
was not the first recantation that he had made; and, in all
probability, if it had answered its purpose, it would not have
been the last. We do not blame him for not choosing to be burned
alive. It is no very severe reproach to any person that he does
not possess heroic fortitude. But surely a man who liked the fire
so little should have had some sympathy for others. A persecutor
who inflicts nothing which he is not ready to endure deserves
some respect. But when a man who loves his doctrines more than
the lives of his neighbours, loves his own little finger better
than his doctrines, a very simple argument a fortiori will enable
us to estimate the amount of his benevolence.

But his martyrdom, it is said, redeemed everything. It is
extraordinary that so much ignorance should exist on this subject.
The fact is that, if a martyr be a man who chooses to die rather
than to renounce his opinions, Cranmer was no more a martyr than
Dr. Dodd. He died solely because he could not help it. He never
retracted his recantation till he found he had made it in vain.
The Queen was fully resolved that, Catholic or Protestant, he
should burn. Then he spoke out, as people generally speak out
when they are at the point of death and have nothing to hope or
to fear on earth. If Mary had suffered him to live, we suspect
that he would have heard mass and received absolution, like a
good Catholic, till the accession of Elizabeth, and that he would
then have purchased, by another apostasy, the power of burning
men better and braver than himself.

We do not mean, however, to represent him as a monster of
wickedness. He was not wantonly cruel or treacherous. He was
merely a supple, timid, interested courtier, in times of frequent
and violent change. That which has always been represented as his
distinguishing virtue, the facility with which he forgave his
enemies, belongs to the character. Slaves of his class are never
vindictive, and never grateful. A present interest effaces past
services and past injuries from their minds together. Their only
object is self-preservation; and for this they conciliate those
who wrong them, just as they abandon those who serve them. Before
we extol a man for his forgiving temper, we should inquire
whether he is above revenge, or below it.

Somerset had as little principle as his coadjutor. Of Henry, an
orthodox Catholic, except that he chose to be his own Pope, and
of Elizabeth, who certainly had no objection to the theology of
Rome, we need say nothing. These four persons were the great
authors of the English Reformation. Three of them had a direct
interest in the extension of the royal prerogative. The fourth
was the ready tool of any who could frighten him. It is not
difficult to see from what motives, and on what plan, such
persons would be inclined to remodel the Church. The scheme was
merely to transfer the full cup of sorceries from the Babylonian
enchantress to other hands, spilling as little as possible by the
way. The Catholic doctrines and rites were to be retained in the
Church of England. But the King was to exercise the control which
had formerly belonged to the Roman Pontiff. In this Henry for a
time succeeded. The extraordinary force of his character, the
fortunate situation in which he stood with respect to foreign
powers, and the vast resources which the suppression of the
monasteries placed at his disposal, enabled him to oppress both
the religious factions equally. He punished with impartial
severity those who renounced the doctrines of Rome, and those who
acknowledged her jurisdiction. The basis, however, on which he
attempted to establish his power was too narrow to be durable. It
would have been impossible even for him long to persecute both
persuasions. Even under his reign there had been insurrections on
the part of the Catholics, and signs of a spirit which was likely
soon to produce insurrection on the part of the Protestants. It
was plainly necessary, therefore, that the Crown should form an
alliance with one or with the other side. To recognise the Papal
supremacy, would have been to abandon the whole design.
Reluctantly and sullenly the government at last joined the
Protestants. In forming this junction, its object was to procure
as much aid as possible for its selfish undertaking, and to make
the smallest possible concessions to the spirit of religious
innovation.

From this compromise the Church of England sprang. In many
respects, indeed, it has been well for her that, in an age of
exuberant zeal, her principal founders were mere politicians. To
this circumstance she owes her moderate articles, her decent
ceremonies, her noble and pathetic liturgy. Her worship is not
disfigured by mummery. Yet she has preserved, in a far greater
degree than any of her Protestant sisters, that art of striking
the senses and filling the imagination in which the Catholic
Church so eminently excels. But, on the other hand, she continued
to be, for more than a hundred and fifty years, the servile
handmaid of monarchy, the steady enemy of public liberty. The
divine right of kings, and the duty of passively obeying all
their commands, were her favourite tenets. She held those tenets
firmly through times of oppression, persecution, and
licentiousness; while law was trampled down; while judgment was
perverted; while the people were eaten as though they were bread.
Once, and but once, for a moment, and but for a moment, when her
own dignity and property were touched, she forgot to practise the
submission which she had taught.

Elizabeth clearly discerned the advantages which were to be
derived from a close connection between the monarchy and the
priesthood. At the time of her accession, indeed, she evidently
meditated a partial reconciliation with Rome; and, throughout her
whole life, she leaned strongly to some of the most obnoxious
parts of the Catholic system. But her imperious temper, her keen
sagacity, and her peculiar situation, soon led her to attach
herself completely to a church which was all her own. On the same
principle on which she joined it, she attempted to drive all her
people within its pale by persecution. She supported it by severe
penal laws, not because she thought conformity to its discipline
necessary to salvation; but because it was the fastness which
arbitrary power was making strong for itself, because she
expected a more profound obedience from those who saw in her both
their civil and their ecclesiastical chief than from those who,
like the Papists, ascribed spiritual authority to the Pope, or
from those who, like some of the Puritans, ascribed it only to
Heaven. To dissent from her establishment was to dissent from an
institution founded with an express view to the maintenance and
extension of the royal prerogative.

This great Queen and her successors, by considering conformity
and loyalty as identical at length made them so. With respect to
the Catholics, indeed, the rigour of persecution abated after her
death. James soon found that they were unable to injure him, and
that the animosity which the Puritan party felt towards them
drove them of necessity to take refuge under his throne. During
the subsequent conflict, their fault was anything but disloyalty.
On the other hand, James hated the Puritans with more than the
hatred of Elizabeth. Her aversion to them was political; his was
personal. The sect had plagued him in Scotland, where he was
weak; and he was determined to be even with them in England,
where he was powerful. Persecution gradually changed a sect into
a faction. That there was anything in the religious opinions of
the Puritans which rendered them hostile to monarchy has never
been proved to our satisfaction. After our civil contests, it
became the fashion to say that Presbyterianism was connected with
Republicanism; just as it has been the fashion to say, since the
time of the French Revolution, that Infidelity is connected with
Republicanism. It is perfectly true that a church constituted on
the Calvinistic model will not strengthen the hands of the
sovereign so much as a hierarchy which consists of several ranks,
differing in dignity and emolument, and of which all the members
are constantly looking to the Government for promotion. But
experience has clearly shown that a Calvinistic church, like
every other church, is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet
when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favoured and
cherished. Scotland has had a Presbyterian establishment during a
century and a half. Yet her General Assembly has not, during that
period, given half so much trouble to the government as the
Convocation of the Church of England gave during the thirty years
which followed the Revolution. That James and Charles should have
been mistaken in this point is not surprising. But we are
astonished, we must confess, that men of our own time, men who
have before them the proof of what toleration can effect, men who
may see with their own eyes that the Presbyterians are no such
monsters when government is wise enough to let them alone, should
defend the persecutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries as indispensable to the safety of the church and the
throne.

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