it was found ready, as usual, to do the will of the court in respect to religious matters; and under the direction of the council, it began almost immediately to relax and alter the laws which had borne so heavily on the protestants in the preceding reign.*

The first act which had any reference to religion was introduced on the 12th of November, and relates to the administration of the sacrament of the altar. It condemns the unreverent and ungodly disputations which had been indulged in by some persons respecting that most holy mystery, and the unseemly words which had been applied to it, and threatens severe punishment on all such irreverent persons. It, however, provides that the sacrament shall be commonly delivered and ministered to the people in both kinds, of bread and wine, as being more conformable to the common use and practice of the apostles and primitive. church, by the space of five hundred years and

* According to "Thomas Hancock, a preacher, who, in the latter time of King Henry and during the reign of King Edward, did much good in Wiltshire and Hantshire, by his diligent preaching the gospel," the people of the town of Pole, in the county of Dorset, were the first that in that part of England were called Protestants." This appears to have been 'in the first year of Edward's reign. "Which town," we are told, "at that time, was wealthy; for they embraced God's word; they were in favor with the rulers and governors of the realm; *** they did love one another, and every one glad of the company of the others, and God poured his blessings plentifully upon them." They afterwards, however, fell away, lost their religious character and their secular prosperity. - Strype, ut sup. ch. 9. pp. 115, 116.

more after Christ's ascension.

were also prohibited.*

Private masses

This law, which was accompanied by a royal proclamation, dated December 27th, 1547, against "irreverent talkers of the sacrament," was, like many public acts of this period, two-edged, cutting both papists and protestants. "The sacra

ment of the altar," as the Lord's supper was called by the Romanists, was a fruitful theme of discussion and disputation. It was a sort of test question between the two great contending parties. of the day. The numerous points raised about it, and the earnestness of the discussions to which it

gave birth, prove this. For example, we find priests and people vehemently disputing whether this rite, ordinance, institution, was a sacrament or a mass; a commemorative, symbolical act, or an oft-repeated oblation and sacrifice of the very body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ; whether it should be partaken of by all the people, or by the priests alone; and whether it should be administered in both kinds, or only in the bread.† In respect to all these questions, the law decided against the papists. It abolished the mass, and substituted for it the sacrament of the Lord's supper. It determined that all Christian people were entitled to partake of this commemorative supper, and that

* Statutes of the Realm, 1 Edward VI. ch. 1; Burnet, vol. 11. pt. 1. bk. 1. pp. 84-87.

† Burnet, vol. 11. pt. II. bk. 1., and Records, No. 25.

it should be celebrated by the administration of the consecrated wine, as well as the bread. But then, the law and the proclamation threatened condign punishment on those who indulged in "unreverent and ungodly disputations" about the holy mystery, and who applied to it "unseemly words." These clauses were aimed chiefly against the violent protestants, or anti-Romanists, who, not content with renouncing the errors of the popish mass, descended to a species of denunciation and ridicule which was little short of downright impiety and profanity. The papists had been teaching for hundreds of years and burning to death those who denied or even doubted the truth of their teaching

that Christ was not only present corporally in his that very same body which

present in the mass, but real body and blood

was born of the virgin, was crucified, died, and was buried; and that body, whole and entire, too, flesh, blood, bones! This was the absurd doctrine of the church, for the denial of which many a poor Lollard, as we have seen in the progress of this history, was burned at Smithfield and elsewhere. The time had been, when even the expression of a doubt on this subject was fatal to the doubter. Now, however, the ban of condemnation being taken off, and the minds of people being freed from the awful constraint in which they had been previously held, they not unnaturally went into speculations about the sacramental presence, which were frivolous, and some of them, certainly, very

For in

irreverent, if not absolutely profane. stance, they debated, as the proclamation tells us, "Whether the body and blood aforesaid is there really or figuratively, locally or circumscriptly, and having quantity and greatness, or but substantially and by substance only, or else but in a figure and manner of speaking; whether his blessed body be there, head, legs, arms, toes, and nails, or any other ways, shape, and manner, naked or clothed; whether he is broken or chewed, or he is always whole; whether the bread there remaineth as we see, or how it departeth; whether the flesh be there alone, and the blood, or part, or each in other, or in the one both, in the other but only blood, and what blood? that only which did flow out of the side, or that which remained? with other such irreverent, superfluous, and curious questions." Others went even further than these speculators; and from being compelled to worship "the host" in the sacramental bread, they ridiculed the whole pretence of the papists, speaking of the host, or sacramental wafer, which was kept in a pyx, or box, as "Jack in the box"; and of the Romish sacramental doctrine, which had brought so many men to untimely deaths, as "the sacrament of the halter"; and of the round wafer itself, as a "round robin"; and employing other "such like unseemly terms. Though they meant not

* Strype's Mems., vol. 11. pt. 1. bk. 1. ch. 9, p. 108; and ch. 11, p. 126; Lathbury, 14.

these contemptible expressions, I suppose, against the holy supper of our Lord, but only against the papal mass.

Another act, and one of great importance to the protestants, was introduced on the 16th of December. This struck down at a blow all the oppressive and persecuting statutes, not only of Henry VIII's time, but of his predecessors, back to the 1st of Richard II. In the first place, the act repealed all the statutes of the late king, which made any doctrine or matter of religion treason; and of Henry V. and of Richard II., which made anything felony or treason except what was deemed treason by the statute of 25 Edward III. In other words, this act of 1 Edward VI. allowed a man to read and interpret the Scriptures as his reason and conscience might direct, without danger of the halter or the fagot; or, in law language, without

* Lingard says, that to neutralize the opposition of the prelates, who were hostile to the bill which legalized the administration of the sacrament of the Lord's supper to the people in both kinds - the bread and wine- the bill was artfully appended to another, which they (the bishops) most anxiously sought to carry, prohibiting, under pain of fine and imprisonment, the application of scurrilous and offensive language to the sacrament of the eucharist. Vol. IV. ch. 1. p. 31. The authors of The Parliamentary History of England say: "This bill was occasioned by an irreverent treatment that sacred mystery met with at that time from the then growing sect of the puritans and others."- - Vol. I. p. 223, 2d ed., London, 1762. "The puritans," so called, did not make their appearance on the stage for several years later than this. But the sort of men of which puritans were made, had been in the church from the days of Wickliffe.