“HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION.” 373 
judgment, learning, and temper, which he displayed in the compi- 
lation of the national creed, are most honourable to his memory, 
and will command the veneration of every true protestant. Doubt- 
less, there are serious blemishes in the conduct of Cranmer—“ he 
too generally complied with evil counsels,” to use the words of a 
great philosophical historian, “but nearly always laboured to pre- 
vent their execution”—yet, admitting all the distinctions and excep- 
tions taken to his character—yes: if his mind was not of the 
firmest texture, so that he often yielded to other reformers in the 
intrepidity which is evinced in confessing the most obnoxious truths, 
when the great and mighty are combined for their suppression—if 
there were other traits in his behaviour which are incapable of the 
ordeal of enquiry—if the saint was sometimes merged in the cour- 
tier—if, in short, we cannot write his character in sunbeams—yet 
all his imperfections will be lost in the remembrance that he was 
the leader of that small, but illustrious band, whose undaunted zeal 
for truth consumed them in the fires?3 of martyrdom, and sent up 
their pure and glorious souls like Manoah’s angel in the flames. 
The next attack we have to notice upon our historian was made 
by a bishop ; but never, perhaps, since the Reformation, has any one 
been elevated to the episcopal office who has so completely disgraced 
it as Parker, Bishop of Oxford. That see was his reward for the 
prompt compliance which he manifested to the order subjoined to 
the second declaration of indulgence published by the infatuated 
James, who required that it should be read by the clergy in all 
churches. But this most devoted slave of royal despotism, still more 
indelibly stigmatised himself, by writing in defence of the doctrines 
of transubstantiation, and the worship of images and saints; and by 
accepting the presidentship of Magdalen College upon the expulsion 
of the intrepid assertor of its rights, Dr. Hough: and to sum up his 
infamy, he, a protestant bishop, with a profligacy of conduct unpa- 
ralleled in the history of time-serving, openly and eagerly expressed 
his willingness to embrace the Roman Catholic religion. They who 
are sincere in their profession of conscientious attachment to the con- 
stitution and doctrines of the Church of England, and who support 
28 The history of the Church of Rome abounds with excesses of party spi- 
rit; and Dr. Lingard has seldom been more influenced by it than when he 
pronounced these sufferings ‘to be short.” We are positively assured by an 
eye-witness—see Eccles. Biog. Hist. vol. iii—and the Roman Catholic histo- 
rian must have read the paper, that Cranmer held the right hand in the 
flame a good share before the fire came to any other part of the body, not 
shrinking while it was reduced to ashes. 
