History of the Reformation, vol. 5

Chapter 6

Reaction—Grostete—Principles of Reform—Contest with the Pope—Sewal—Progress of the Nation—Opposition to the Papacy—Conversion of Bradwardine—Grace is Supreme—Edward III—Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire

In the reign of Henry III, son of John, while the king was conniving at the usurpations of Rome, and the pope ridiculing the complaints of the barons, a pious and energetic man, of comprehensive understanding, was occupied in the study of the Holy Scriptures in their original languages, and bowing to their sovereign authority. Robert Grostete (Great-head or Capito) was born of poor parents in the county of Lincolnshire, and raised to the see of Lincoln in 1235, when he was sixty years of age, he boldly undertook to reform his diocese, one of the largest in England. Nor was this all. At the very time when the Roman pontiff, who had hitherto been content to be called the vicar of Saint Peter, proclaimed himself the vicar of God, and was ordering the English bishops to find benefices for three hundred Romans, Grostete was declaring, that “to follow a pope who rebels against the will of Christ, is to separate from Christ and his body; and if ever the time should come when all men follow an erring pontiff, then will be the great apostasy. Then will true Christians refuse to obey, and Rome will be the cause of an unprecedented schism.” Thus did he predict the Reformation. Disgusted at the avarice of the monks and priests, he visited Rome to demand a reform. “Brother,” said Innocent IV to him with some irritation, “Is thine eye evil because I am good?” The English bishop exclaimed with a sigh: “O money, money! how great is thy power—especially in this court of Rome!” HRSCV5 700.3

A year had scarcely elapsed before Innocent commanded the bishop to give a canonry in Lincoln cathedral to his infant nephew. Grostete replied: “After the sin of Lucifer there is none more opposed to the gospel than that which ruins souls by giving them a faithless minister. Bad pastors are the cause of unbelief, heresy, and disorder. Those who introduce them into the church are little better than antichrists, and their culpability is in proportion to their dignity. Although the chief of the angels should order me to commit such a sin, I would refuse. My obedience forbids me to obey; and therefore I rebel.” HRSCV5 700.4

Thus spoke a bishop to his pontiff: his obedience to the word of God forbade him to obey the pope. This was the principle of the Reformation. “Who is this old driveller that in his dotage dares to judge of my conduct?” exclaimed Innocent, whose wrath was appeased by the intervention of certain cardinals. Grostete on his dying bed professed still more clearly the principles of the reformers; he declared that a heresy was “an opinion conceived by carnal motives, contrary to Scripture, openly taught and obstinately defended,” thus asserting the authority of Scripture instead of the authority of the church. He died in peace, and the public voice proclaimed him “a searcher of the Scriptures, an adversary of the pope, and despiser of the Romans.” Innocent, desiring to take vengeance on his bones, meditated the exhumation of his body, when one night (says Matthew of Paris) the bishop appeared before him. Drawing near the pontiff’s bed, he struck him with his crosier, and thus addressed him with terrible voice and threatening look: “Wretch! the Lord doth not permit thee to have any power over me. Woe be to thee!” The vision disappeared, and the pope, uttering a cry as if he had been struck by some sharp weapon, lay senseless on his couch. Never after did he pass a quiet night, and pursued by the phantoms of his troubled imagination, he expired while the palace re-echoed with his lamentable groans. HRSCV5 700.5

Grostete was not single in his opposition to the pope. Sewal, archbishop of York, did the same, and “the more the pope cursed him, the more the people blessed him.” “Moderate your tyranny,” said the archbishop to the pontiff, “for the Lord said to Peter, Feed my sheep, and not shear them, flay them, or devour them.” The pope smiled and let the bishop speak, because the king allowed the pope to act. The power of England, which was constantly increasing, was soon able to give more force to these protests. HRSCV5 701.1

The nation was indeed growing in greatness. The madness of John, which had caused the English people to lose their continental possessions, had given them more unity and power. The Norman kings, being compelled to renounce entirely the country which had been their cradle, had at length made up their minds to look upon England as their home. The two races, so long hostile, melted one into the other. Free institutions were formed; the laws were studied; and colleges were founded. The language began to assume a regular form, and the ships of England were already formidable at sea. For more than a century the most brilliant victories attended the British armies. A king of France was brought captive to London: an English king was crowned at Paris. Even Spain and Italy felt the valor of these proud islanders. The English people took their station in the foremost rank. Now the character of a nation is never raised by halves. When the mighty ones of the earth were seen to fall before her, England could no longer crawl at the feet of an Italian priest. HRSCV5 701.2

At no period did her laws attack the papacy with so much energy. At the beginning of the fourteenth century an Englishman having brought to London one of the pope’s bulls—a bull of an entirely spiritual character, it was an excommunication—was prosecuted as a traitor to the crown, and would have been hanged, had not the sentence, at the chancellor’s intercession, been changed to perpetual banishment. The common law was the weapon the government then opposed to the papal bulls. Shortly afterwards, in 1307, King Edward ordered the sheriffs to resist the arrogant pretensions of the Romish agents. But it is to two great men in the fourteenth century, equally illustrious, the one in the state, and the other in the church, that England is indebted for the development of the protestant element in England. HRSCV5 701.3

In 1346, an English army, 34,000 strong, met face to face at Crecy a French army of 100,000 fighting men. Two individuals of very different characters were in the English host. One of them was King Edward III, a brave and ambitious prince, who, being resolved to recover for the royal authority all its power, and for England all her glory, had undertaken the conquest of France. The other was his chaplain Bradwardine, a man of so humble a character that his meekness was often taken for stupidity. And thus it was that on his receiving the pallium at Avignon from the hands of the pope on his elevation to the see of Canterbury, a jester mounted on an ass rode into the hall and petitioned the pontiff to make him primate instead of that imbecile priest. HRSCV5 701.4

Bradwardine was one of the most pious men of the age, and to his prayers his sovereign’s victories were ascribed. He was also one of the greatest geniuses of his time, and occupied the first rank among astronomers, philosophers, and mathematicians. The pride of science had at first alienated him from the doctrine of the cross. But one day while in the house of God and listening to the reading of the Holy Scriptures, these words struck his ear: It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. His ungrateful heart, he tells us, at first rejected this humiliating doctrine with aversion. Yet the word of God had laid its powerful hold upon him; he was converted to the truths he had despised, and immediately began to set forth the doctrines of eternal grace at Merton College, Oxford. He had drunk so deep at the fountain of Scripture that the traditions of men concerned him but little, and he was so absorbed in adoration in spirit and in truth, that he remarked not outward superstitions. His lectures were eagerly listened to and circulated through all Europe. The grace of God was their very essence, as it was of the Reformation. With sorrow Bradwardine beheld Pelagianism everywhere substituting a mere religion of externals for inward Christianity, and on his knees he struggled for the salvation of the church. “As in the times of old, four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal strove against a single prophet of God; so now, O Lord,” he exclaimed, “the number of those who strive with Pelagius against thy free grace cannot be counted. They pretend not to receive grace freely, but to buy it. The will of men (they say) should precede, and thine should follow: theirs is the mistress, and thine the servant Alas! nearly the whole world is walking in error in the steps of Pelagius. Arise, O Lord, and judge thy cause.” And the Lord did arise, but not until after the death of this pious archbishop—in the days of Wickliffe, who, when a youth, listened to the lectures at Merton College—and especially in the days of Luther and of Calvin. His contemporaries gave him the name of the profound doctor. HRSCV5 701.5

If Bradwardine walked truthfully in the path of faith, his illustrious patron Edward advance triumphantly in the field of policy. Pope Clement IV having decreed that the first two vacancies in the Anglican church should be conferred on two of his cardinals: “France is becoming English,” said the courtiers to the king; “and by way of compensation, England is becoming Italian.” Edward, desirous of guaranteeing the religious liberties of England, passed with the consent of parliament in 1350 the statute of Provisors, which made void every ecclesiastical appointment contrary to the rights of the king, the chapters, or the patrons. Thus the privileges of the chapters and the liberty of the English Catholics, as well as the independence of the crown, were protected against the invasion of foreigners; and imprisonment or banishment for life was denounced upon all offenders against the law. HRSCV5 702.1

This bold step alarmed the pontiff. Accordingly, three years after, the king having nominated one of his secretaries to the see of Durham—a man without any of the qualities becoming a bishop—the pope readily confirmed the appointment. When some one expressed his astonishment at this, the pope made answer: “If the king of England had nominated an ass, I would have accepted him.” This may remind us of the ass of Avignon; and it would seem that this humble animal at that time played a significant part in the elections of the papacy. But be that as it may, the pope withdrew his pretensions. “Empires have their term,” observes an historian at this place; “when once they have reached it, they halt, they retrograde, they fall.” HRSCV5 702.2

The term seemed to be drawing nearer every day. In the reign of Edward III, between 1343 and 1353, again in 1364, and finally under Richard II in 1393, those stringent laws were passed which interdicted all appeal to the court of Rome, all bulls from the Roman bishop, all excommunications, &c, in a word, every act infringing on the rights of the crown; and declared that whoever should bring such document into England, or receive, publish, or execute them, should be put out of the king’s protection, deprived of their property, attached in their persons, and brought before the king in council to undergo their trial according to the terms of the act. Such was the statute of Proemunire. HRSCV5 702.3

Great was the indignation of the Romans at the news of this law: “If the statute of mortmain put the pope into a sweat,” says Fuller, “this of proemunire gave him a fit of fever.” One pope called it an “execrable statute,”—“a horrible crime.” Such are the terms applied by the pontiffs to all that thwarts their ambition. HRSCV5 702.4

Of the two wars carried on by Edward—the one against the king of France, and the other against popery—the latter was the most righteous and important. The benefits which this prince had hoped to derive from his brilliant victories at Crecy and Poitiers dwindled away almost entirely before his death; while his struggles with the papacy, founded as they were on truth, have exerted even to out own days an indisputable influence on the destinies of Great Britain. Yet the prayers and the conquests of Bradwardine, who proclaimed in that fallen age the doctrine of grace, produced effects still greater, not only for the salvation of many souls, but for the liberty, moral force, and greatness of England. HRSCV5 702.5