on the part of the compilers to curry favour by working uniformly in a particular direction, and will incline a dispassionate reader to give them credit for an earnest sincerity, and a religious aim. The most distinctive features, although some of them may bear marks of Gallican influence, are not of any uniform cast, and do not therefore tend to recommend it to any one party. If this be so, it gives an additional interest to what may appear to many the most remarkable characteristic of this authoritative and strictly synodical work; namely, that it sets forth a system of Christian instruction within the limits of the Roman obedience, and immediately before the clang of the Scottish Reformation, which from beginning to end does not so much as make mention of the Pope, or of the Church of Rome. Had the Catechism been published in the time of Henry VIII, and after his rupture with Clement VII, there might have been room for a suspicion that this reticence was due to a desire to win his favour and support for the maintenance of the popular aspects of religion in Scotland, such as he upheld them in England, that is to say without trenchant change. But the Scottish Church of 1552 had nothing to hope at that date from Northumberland, or from Cranmer, by effacing the name of the Pope from the working system of the Church. Is it not probable that they taught according to their own settled convictions: to such convictions, as had in England prompted the excellent Bishop Tunstal to write against the papal supremacy, and as must have acted on the English convocation when, under the Presidency not of Cranmer but Warham, it declared the King to be the Governor and Protector of the English Church, in terms which, though carefully guarded, were sufficient to dispense with the ordinary jurisdiction of the Pope? It is little likely that the threat of premunire could have produced such a result, unless there had been a wide-spread anterior disposition, in both orders of the English clergy, to carry to its final consummation the controversy, which had subsisted for so many generations, between a powerful body of English opinion and the Court and See of Rome. It is one of the strange dislocations, sufficiently common in histories but partially explored, which has hitherto, in popular impression, ascribed the abrogation of the Roman supremacy in England only to the lustful desire of Henry VIII to set aside his marriage with Queen Catherine. I remember a sentence in a sermon, which I heard more than forty years ago at Rome, in the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, and which set forth, with the aid of one or two rather inflammatory epithets, but with substantial correctness, this popular impression. A cagione, said the preacher, di quest' orrendo vizio, cioè di lussuria, Arrigo Ottavo, Re d'Inghilterra, si sciolse dalla Chiesa, e si fece capo di una setta diabolica1. Is it not much nearer the truth to say that, under the influence of the passion thus imputed to him, Henry VIII availed himself of a state of feeling ready to his hand, widely spread perhaps among the people, certainly among the governing classes of the kingdom; and thus, although in his controversy with Luther he had been an extreme supporter of papal claims, made use of this public sentiment to release himself from the fetters of an authority, which (after whatever fluctuations) finally refused him the object of his desire? Nothing had yet happened to direct into diverging channels Scottish and English thought concerning religion. The ruling element of English society, says Count d'Alviella 2, took, at the period of the Reformation, to une sorte de catholicisme sans pape; 1 'In consequence of this dreadful vice, I mean of lust, Henry VIII, King of England, separated from the Church, and made himself the head of a diabolical sect.' L'Evolution Religieuse, p. 6. and the work now offered to the reader favours the belief, that a similar current of feelings and ideas in 1552 had been leading the corresponding classes in Scotland towards a similar conclusion. In any case, the fact, on which these remarks are grounded, is eminently weighty and suggestive. W. E. G. HAWARDEN CASTLE, October, 1884. INTRODUCTION. JOHN HAMILTON, Archbishop of St. Andrews, who published the following Catechism, was a natural son of James, the first Earl of Arran. He was born in 1512, entered, as a mere lad, the Benedictine monastery at Kilwinning. ERRATA. Page xv, 8 lines from bottom, for Scotus read Scotos [Hamilton's Catechism.] influence of his high position and his undoubted talents to the support of the Catholic system. He put in force the penal laws against heretics, he held several provincial councils for the reformation of abuses and the promotion of ecclesiastical discipline. He also reconstituted and endowed St. Mary's College at St. Andrews, for the purpose of training theologians 'for defending and confirming the Catholic faith.' The publication of the Catechism set forth in the Scottish vernacular, for the instruction 1 Keith's History, vol. i. p. 82; Crawfurd's Officers of State, p. 376; Brady's Episcopal Succession, vol. i. p. 130. The best account of Hamilton's career will be found in Dr. Cameron Lees' Abbey of Paisley, 1878. |