ing and presiding elder, or Bishop proper of that charge, and others, as in the synagogue, not necessarily gifted with learning or preaching power, however apt to teach, being the Seniores Ecclesiæ, without whose advice and decision nothing should be proceeded with. "Which function, by what negligence it fell into disuse I know not, unless through the carelessness or perhaps rather the pride of the teaching Presbyters affecting everything by themselves." As to the regimen of the Church, it should be under the government of Christ directly and alone, though all its members and office-bearers should be subject in civil affairs to the magistrate whom the Lord has entrusted with the power of the sword. Perhaps the most striking thing about the whole treatise is the way Bucer cleaves to Scripture proof and testimony for everything, and the fidelity with which he carries his appeal invariably to its decisions as final. In this and other respects he is thoroughly Puritan, and at nearly every point anticipates the later Presbyterian positions.

Believing in a threefold ministry which the Church ought to exercise, Bucer has no sympathy with the notion, to which the English Church was committing herself, of a threefold order in the ministry, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. It was Calvin who brought again to light the original and primitive threefold ministry of the Church—a ministry (as Knox afterwards burnt into the Scottish consciousness) of DOCTRINE, DISCIPLINE, and DISTRIBUTION.

With such views Bucer was in full sympathy; and he had to a considerable extent inoculated the young King and others with them. That efforts were not made at once to have them

▲ De Regno, pp. 34, 35. This is the notable saying of Ambrose, in his Comment. on 1 Tim. v. 1. "Unde et Synagoga et postea Ecclesia Seniores habuit, quorum sine consilio nihil agebatur in Ecclesia. Quod, quâ negligentiâ obsoleverat, nescio, nisi forte Doctorum desidia aut magis superbiá dum volunt aliquid videri."

2 Of this threefold ministry in the Church, the threefold clerical orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons in the interests of a sacerdotalism or caste in the Church, is a later perversion and caricature. Calvin, with his eagle eye and spiritual discernment, had noted this real seat and source of Church corruption; and no man,-not Cranmer nor Ridley, however able and learned they were,-so vividly descried this fons et origo mali, and so effectually provided against it. "The Lord's Kλnpos, the Lord's clergy, is His people." This Presbyterian watchword is in full and happy accord with Luther's prominent idea, the corner-stone of his Church system, on which he lays such emphasis, the universal priesthood of believers.

3

embodied in practical form, must be attributed to his own sudden removal and the young King's early death. Of Bucer, even Heylin declares, "It cannot be expressed how bitterly he bewailed, that when the Gospel began to spread in England, a greater regard was not had to discipline and purity of rites in constituting the Churches." And certainly the pious young King was so much pleased and convinced that, to use Burnet's words, "he set himself to write upon a further reformation and the necessity of Church discipline." This phrase, "THE DISCIPLINE," became, as is well known, the watchword of the Presbyterians in Elizabeth's reign; it is therefore significant to note the place it holds at this earlier date, especially in King Edward's own Remains and Journal. Thus, in a little treatise which he wrote after Bucer's death (K. Edward's Remains, No. ii.), he laments his inability to have the primitive Church discipline restored, "because those Bishops who should execute it are men unable, some for papistry, some for ignorance, some for age, some for their ill name, some for all these "; and so he resolves to keep it out of the hands of those that were "ill Bishops"; and he makes a memorandum under October of the same year, 1552, "For commissions to be granted to those Bishops that were grave, learned, wise, sober, and of good religion, for the executing of discipline." Proposals were even on foot for dropping the official name Bishop altogether, and leaving it to the papalins, using Superintendent in its place, as among the Protestant Churches of Germany. And worthy Bishop Poynet himself thus argues for the change:

"Who knoweth not that the name Bishop hath been so abused, that when it was spoken, the people understood nothing else but a great lord that went in a white rochet, with a wide-shaven crown, and that carried an oil-box with him, wherewith he used, once in seven years, riding about, to confirm children? Now, to bring the people from this abuse, what

Heylin's Hist. of Reformation, p. 65.

2 Burnet's Hist. of Reform. vol. ii. p. 155.

First printed by Burnet in an Appendix to his second vol., and more fully in two vols. of the Roxburgh Club, The Writings of Edward VI., with Historical notes by J. G. Nichols, 1857. It may be well to bear in mind that when Edward VI. came to the throne, in January, 1547, he was but ten years old, and was to come of age at eighteen, but died in his sixteenth year.

better means can be devised than to teach the people their error by another word out of the Scripture, of the same signification? Which thing, by the term Superintendent, would in time have been well brought to pass. . . . And the word Superintendent is such a name that the papists themselves. . . cannot find fault withal. . . . For Bishop means simply Superintendent."

"Episcopus enim superintendens interpretatur."-Strype's Eccles. Memorials, iii. pp. 317, 318.

II.

JOHN A'LASCO AND HIS EARLY PRESBYTERIAN

ORGANIZATION IN LONDON.

Or the foreign divines who came into England at the call of Cranmer, to further the Reformation, John A'Lasco, Polish Reformer and LONDON PASTOR, was at once the most distinguished, and the most signally favoured by those in power.

1

His writings are of special value in throwing light on those strong and more pronounced forms of Protestantism which the Reformation under Edward VI. tended to assume.

Standing high in the esteem of the Protector Somerset and other chief Councillors of State, A'Lasco was often consulted on English Church affairs, and exercised no small influence on the opinions and procedure of the young King and his advisers.

The whole life and work of this remarkable man are of great interest. His London labours have deep significance for us, founder as he was of the first legally organized body of Churches in England outside the pale of the national Establishment. These Churches were bound together according to a Presbyterian form of organization, and they embodied Presbyterian principles and ideas beyond anything that the English or Scottish Reformation had yet seen.

tongue, Laski, was in He came of an ancient

John A'Lasco, or in his own native every sense one of Poland's noblemen. family, whose ancestral seat, the castle of Lask, may still be discerned in some fragmentary ruins near the old town of the There he was born in 1499, and thus he takes his

same name.

1 Now, after three centuries, for the first time carefully collected and edited by Professor Kuyper, of Amsterdam.-" JOANNIS A'LASCO OPERA, tam edita quam inedita," 2 vols. These writings, doctrinal, devotional, and epistolary, have been gathered with pious care from many quarters, Dublin, St. Petersburg, Zurich, Amsterdam. Some of them, especially the London tractates, had become most rare, some of them unique, others quite inaccessible.

See also the Life of John A'Lasco, by Dr. Hermann Dalton, St. Petersburg (translated in part by Rev. M. J. Evans, B.A. Lond. 1886).

place between the elder Reformers (like Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon, and Farel), and the younger ones who were born after him (like Calvin, Knox, Bullinger, and Ridley). With all these and other noted contemporaries he became acquainted, with some of them very intimately, while with not a few in various lands he cultivated warm friendship and correspondence. For not many had travelled so much as John A'Lasco, or had so large experience of the different European nationalities.1

Nor did he fail to profit from his early educational advantages and other peculiar opportunities. His sojourn at Basle with Erasmus, and his Biblical studies there, did much to shake his Romish faith, and left impressions which, though often weakened, were never effaced. Unfortunately, we have no letters of his for the twelve years from 1528 to 1540, and few direct means therefore of gauging the conflict through which he passed. That a mighty and permanent change was going forward in the interval is evident enough, however slowly effected. The crisis itself, however, stands out clear and sharp. In 1538, two mitres are at his command, Wesprim in Hungary, and Cujavia in Poland, the latter opening his way to the Primacy itself. Matters are now brought to an issue. On one side, dignities with moral debasement: on the other, Christ's pure Gospel with losses and persecution. He feels himself a Protestant at last; and better still, a humble but genuine follower of the Lord Jesus. The die is cast. He goes straight to the King: tells out his whole mind: and comes away "the Lord's freed-man."

But he cannot remain in Poland. And when, like Abraham, he is called to go out, by faith he went out, not knowing whither he went.

"This man," says Strype," had abandoned his own country and honours to dwell an exile in other parts for the freer acknowledgment of the Gospel, but not without the Polish king's good leave, by whom he was well known and beloved, and who did more than once make use of him in his difficult affairs."

For two years A'Lasco is a wanderer, chiefly in Rhineland,

For details of his brilliant early career and high position, see the Author's Sketch of his Life, in the Religious Tract Society's New Biographical Series, No. 41.